Not All Who Wander
by Quirel
Summary: At the dawn of the Great Schism, Truth's betrayal pits the Elites against the Brutes, and the civil war is tearing the Covenant's most holy city apart. Dark forces threaten to spread from the Sacred Halo, and the last High Prophet contemplates galactic genocide. This is not that story. This story is about a Jackal merchant, who just wants to save his crew and get out of town.
1. Pandemonium

_The story you are reading is a narrative synthesized from news reports, cantina songs, and oral histories collected from the territories of the former Covenant Empire. It is but one of many produced by Project Footprint, a program of the University of New Aberdeen that seeks to chronicle the evolution of Human-alien relations in the years between the War and the current Diaspora. By presenting historical events in the format of a popular narrative, we hope to spark interest in the real events, and preserve history in popular memory for centuries to come._

* * *

As Boatswain Quatch stared down the twin barrels of a spiker, he realized that the greatest lesson he would learn from his shipmaster's last moments was that refusing to make a decision was the worst decision one could make. When two bad choices presented themselves, there was merit in finding a third. But when a pack of Jiralhanae march onto your dock and demand that you join the fight against the treasonous Sangheili, there was really no choice at all.

"Feckless, cowardly Kig-Yar," growled the chieftain as he wiped the last of Shipmaster Val's blood from his bayonet. He was a massive warrior, half again Quatch's height and covered from head to toe in coarse tawny hair and muscles like slabs of stone. What little armor he wore was bloodstained and not his own, but rather the plates from a crimson Sangheili battle harness, riveted to leather straps so that they would fit the Brute's massive frame. More trophy than armor.

He turned to regard the rest of the crew, most of whom were pinned down to the deck and held at gunpoint. "I should have known better than to ask you to fight. Your kind are weak, but you revel in your weakness and dare call it strength! You have no faith."

Beside him, Quatch felt one of the other Kig-Yar quiver with rage. It was Taol, one of the engine crew. Like Quatch, she'd served in the war against the Humans. She knew what it was like to leap out of a dropship under hostile fire, and she'd done it willingly. He clicked his teeth to get her attention, break off her indignation before she did something stupid. Her eye flicked toward him, narrowed, and she checked her temper.

The warrior watching the two of them grinned even wider. Quatch made the mistake of meeting his eyes, and quickly dropped his gaze to the warrior's steel-capped canines, but that only let him see the grin turn into a snarl. The boatswain braced himself for the blow that was surely coming… but it never landed. The warrior didn't dare interrupt his packmaster's speech for such a minor offense.

That was Jiralhanae leadership. It was rule by force and terror, all the way down.

The deck rumbled, which made Quatch's quills stand on end, but the Jiralhanae paid no mind. "The Sangheili knew what you are and they left you well enough alone. No more! Their days have come to an end, and empty promises of piety will not save you. You will fight for the faith, or you will die."

The deck rumbled again, louder. Within and without High Charity, the vengeful Sangheili and the ascendant Jiralhanae were fighting and dying for the faith, and it was tearing the ancient city apart.

"Watch them," the chieftain said to his troops. Without another word, he stormed off to the ship. For a moment, his large, shaggy frame was outlined by the light of the cargo bay. Then he was gone.

The Brutes snarled for the freighter crew to get to their feet and stomped on the heels of anyone who hesitated. Quatch scrambled to comply, but the Brute standing over him grabbed his arm and shoved him toward the bulkhead, where in a sane world the crew would be unloading their cargo for inspection. It was all the boatswain could do to stay on his feet, but then Quatch collided with the junior electrician and they both went down in a tangle of limbs.

The Brute kicked them both across the deck. The air was crushed from Quatch's lungs, but he rolled and ducked under the stamping hooves of his shipmates. He seized a deckhand by the belt and used her momentum as leverage to pull himself up, and then he was on his hooves and running, spitting curses as he caught his breath.

With kicks and jabs of bayonets, the Brutes herded the crew into a corner. Thirty Kig-Yar pressed into a space that would have been claustrophobic for ten. The deckhand fell and almost pulled Quatch down with her. He yanked her back upright, and as her weight spun him around, he saw the Brutes standing in a firing line, with their weapons leveled at the crew.

In that moment, Quatch thought he was going to die. The Brutes were laughing or snarling, but whatever they said to each other was lost in his shipmates' screams. Anger flashed through him like lightning, anger at the Brutes and their sanguine cruelty. It was the same helpless rage he felt years back when his lance was pinned down by the Humans' artillery, and back then he'd had to check himself before he did something suicidally stupid.

An eternity later, most of the Brutes lowered their weapons and walked away. Only one was left, a giant of a warrior with a plasma repeater and a savage look in his eye. He shouted for silence, and when he didn't get it, he lowered his gun and fired a long burst into the floor. The crew was quiet when he stopped, save for the bawling from the injured.

The warrior fired again, panning the gun from left to right. When he was done, he tripped the active cooldown and cleared his throat.

"I am Atroposus. You live at my mercy," he growled. "If any of you cross this line, all of your lives are forfeit. If any of you speaks above a whisper, I will kill you and all who stand near you."

Another shudder ran through the dock, one that made the lights flicker. It was as if the gavel of the gods themselves had punctuated his words. The warrior smiled and stepped back from the line he'd blasted into the floor.

His orders were all wrong. There was tension, an undercurrent of panic. Quatch could feel it like a glass rod in the back of his mind, slowly but surely straining under a growing load. Panic was growing, and it was spreading from one shipmate to the because they barely had room to breathe. Someone, maybe him, would snap first, and then they'd all make a blind scramble for freedom. They'd be fools not to. Anyone who didn't would be trampled underfoot or executed on the spot. Better to die on one's-

"Steady," someone said in a stern whisper. "Steady."

Quatch turned to see the engine chief, Nak, with a ball of tightly-wrapped thallit vine in his hand. The old codger was unravelling and weaving the vine between two claws. In a moment, he had a braid half as long and thick as his finger, which he wrapped in a thin, tightly woven cloth from a roll in his other hand. All the while, he gently admonished the crew with the same stern tone.

"Steady," he said, before he clamped one end of the thallit stick in his beak and lit the other end. He drew until the end glowed bright red, and then he passed the stick to Quatch.

"Steady on now," he said. Already, he was braiding another, deftly juggling the ball of vine and the roll of cloth and the lighter around in his callused hands. "Every last one of you had better calm down. Fright and flight will just get us all killed."

Quatch filled his lungs and passed the stick on to the next shipmate. From experience, he knew that the old T'vaoan had a nearly endless supply of the dry vine, and soon the whole crew would be passing the sticks back and forth like children playing catch. Nak might even have enough to improvise a smoke screen, Quatch thought wryly.

"This was a bad job," Quatch said. "Never should have come here." He was echoing the late Shipmaster. Whenever Shipmaster Val had said those words, he'd meant 'I want us out of this port in five minutes.'

"Keep your head down and your eyes open," Nak said. "Maybe we'll live to see the light of Y'Deio again, yes?"

"Yann's leg was trampled, chief," a Kig-Yar named Das said to Nak as she pushed by Quatch. "He can't run, and he's not the only one. Jiin and Cal-."

"We aren't running," Nak said, shooting a look at Quatch. "Are we, chief?"

If the cook couldn't run, he couldn't run. That was the difference between Quatch and most of the others. He was one of the few to have served in battle. Most of the others were civilians, and natives of Eayn at that. Their first instinct was to look after the weakest members of the crew. They passed around their thallit sticks and tended to the trampled limbs and bayonet cuts. They were good people like that.

Quatch had been a good citizen once, but that had been burned away in combat. Now he thought in terms of triage. Five years of fighting the Humans taught him that a chain was only as strong as its weakest link. But people weren't metal rings. Unlike chains, the weakest members of the group spread their weakness, and the group that wasted energy carrying the weak was all the more vulnerable. The weak had to grow stronger, or they had to be left behind.

Quatch looked around. The crew had spread out to within a pace of the Atroposus's line, and now they had enough room to sit down. He could see how terrified they all were. Terrified of their predicament, terrified of the Brutes, terrified of the fight that they would soon be joining. He saw wide eyes and clasped beaks everywhere, and he caught a whiff of an acrid smell. Someone had already soiled themselves.

When the shooting started, he knew they would shatter like brittle steel. Most of them. Not all. Taol was a veteran from his unit, and she could more than handle herself in combat. And Nak couldn't have gotten that old without seeing a fight or two. And the pipeliner… he didn't know her past, but she carried herself like she knew how to survive a firefight.

"Lan," he said to the pipeliner. "I need you to get Yann on his feet."

"He can't walk," Das protested. She was the doctor's mate, and the running joke in the crew was that she is too motherly for a female who wasn't raising a clutch of children.

"If he can't walk, he's dead," Quatch said matter-of-factly. "The Jiralhanae have no use for a crippled soldier, and they'll sooner kill him than let the rest of us think an injury is the easy way out of the fight."

"That's damn right!" their guard shouted. Quatch nearly jumped out of his skin. The guard smiled as he went back to pacing in front of the crew, but only a fool would mistake it for humor. With his nerves still ringing and his heart hammering against his ribs, Quatch turned back to the other Kig-Yar.

"I was going to tell you to get ready to run," he whispered. "But our guard's ears are cleaner than the rest of him."

"They're not going to make us fight, are they?" Das asked. Her tone made it clear that the Brutes might as well ask her to sprout wings and fly.

"They want cannon fodder," Quatch replied. "If fighting happens to occur, that's a bonus to them."

"We can't do that," Nak said.

"We don't have a choice."

"We're not warriors," Das said. "You're insane!"

"He's telling you the way things are," Taol rebuked her. "If you can't accept that, then that's your problem."

"It doesn't make sense," Das protested. Her eyes were like saucers of crinkled foil, her pupils narrow pinpricks in comparison. The thallit was either doing too much for her or not enough. "We aren't fighters. What are we going to accomplish for them? You're a warrior, you should be talking to them! Convince them to let us go! They can't all be crazy-"

For a moment, Quatch's terror cooled into cold fury. He seized her by the wrist and the scruff of the neck and hauled her through the crowd. They came to a stop just short of the line of scorchmarks, where they could see out through the hangar entrance.

The _Libation_ was parked in a dock big enough to handle a vessel three times her length, out towards the end of a spire that rose from High Charity's ventral spine. Therefore, they had an almost unobstructed view through the canopy airlock to the battle outside, and Halo beyond.

The sacred ring was majestic. Elegant. Breathtaking. The surface outside was covered in designs whose scale and purpose defied the imagination. Just one of the disks on the rim was was bigger than all the megacities of Eayn, and the whole ring could girdle Quatch's homeworld with room to spare. The inside held oceans and mountains and everything in between. He knew in his heart that, even if he had never in all his life been told that Halo was a sacred artefact, looking upon it would still be a religious experience.

And in the foreground, the magnificent warships of the Covenant armada were doing battle with all the proper dignity and righteous fury of flies fighting over a scrap of rancid meat. High Charity's own home fleets had split into two factions, maybe more, and they were blasting away at each other with wild abandon. The warships hurled streamers of light at each other, at the void in between, and some of their light even flickered up toward the sacred ring, though it fell mercifully short. That same fight was raging all over the Covenant's most holy city.

Quatch wasn't one for faith, but he knew sacrilege when he saw it.

"The gods themselves have shut their eyes in shame," Quatch said. He turned upon Das. "Do you see that? The four-jaws and the Jirals are fighting over the Halo ring. They have all taken leave of their senses! You think this is insane? Wake up. Insanity is the rule of the day."

Das didn't reply. All the anger and indignation vanished from her eyes, and nothing replaced it. Quatch had defeated her, but maybe he'd gone too far, and there was no taking it back.

"Dasa," he said. "I need you to get Yann and the others ready to walk. Help them."

She nodded and fled. Quatch was left feeling something he couldn't describe and didn't like.

"Mmm. Nice view," Nak said behind him. Quatch turned, expecting to see the old engine chief's face creased with disappointment. Instead, he was very deliberately looking at the hangar door above, without any any expression at all. That was worse.

"Yeah, it is a nice view," Quatch said, looking skyward.

"Don't change the subject, chief," Nak said. He tied off one last thallit stick and wedged it between two yellowed teeth. "Violence is how you discipline warriors in the legions. That's not how we do things on a ship."

"We don't have a ship anymore," Quatch retorted. Some of the crew shot him a wounded look, as if to ask whose side he was on. He pitied their optimism.

"Doesn't change anything. Do the math. A crew is still a crew."

"Yeah, we're also missing a shipmaster," Quatch said.

Nak looked at him expectantly, but Quatch had nothing more to say. He was staring at the trail of bloody footprints that lead from the group back to the shipmaster's headless body. There were others lying on the deck, killed in the initial struggle or in the stampede. A curl of smoke was rising from a spike in the paymaster's head, not far from where the shipmaster's mate lay. Closer, one of the deck crew was lying limp with bloody footprints all over him. Quatch hadn't seen him move at all. He was either dead or mercifully unconscious.

Those four were the lucky ones. Barring a miracle, the rest of the crew was facing combat. Most of them were civilians. The rest of their lives were going to be brutal, panic-stricken, and short.

Quatch remembered what he had said to Das. The gods themselves have shut their eyes in shame. The only miracle that could save the crew was one of their own making.

A hovercart entered the hangar and turned smartly toward the Kig-Yar's corner. It was piloted by an Unggoy wearing a slave's white rebreather harness and ill-fitting red armor with a blue bloodstain down the side. The Unggoy had the burning eyes of a true believer, and when Atroposus flagged him down, he argued animatedly with the Jiralhanae. After a quick back-and-forth, the guard roared and raised his fist. The Unggoy nearly fell out of his seat in fright, but turned the cart around and drove it for the far corner.

"What was that about?" Nak asked.

"Delivery," Taol said. "That's a cartload of shield gauntlets for us, harvested fresh from the battlefield."

"And weapons?" Nak asked.

"Don't be ridiculous," Taol replied. "They won't trust us with weapons. The guard threw a fit because shield gauntlets alone would make his job harder."

"But when they throw us into the battle-"

"You'll have shield gauntlets and whatever you pick up from the dead," Taol said.

Nak looked to Quatch, but Quatch had nothing for him. Taol wasn't wrong, even if she could be more gentle about it.

But Nak didn't look away. And out of the corner of his eye, Quatch saw that some of the other crew were staring at him with the same expectant look. Because they were civilians? Because he'd seen combat, and still bore his service tattoos? He couldn't save them. He wanted to shout at them. They weren't warriors, and he wasn't their shipmaster.

"Stand up and pay heed," Atroposus barked. "the Fist approaches!"

"My men call me Fist," the chieftain said as he sauntered up to the crew. "You will call me Marsangtus."

He towered over the Kig-Yar, sizing them up and not liking what he saw. The Kig-Yar didn't like what they saw either. He still wore the blood-splattered trophy armor, but in addition to that he'd wrapped his limbs with ballistic weave and slathered his fur with fireproof lotions. Tendrils of greasy hair hung from under his golden helmet. Across one shoulder he carried a longarm spiker with an obscenely long blade, the same blade he'd decapitated the shipmaster with.

The chieftain singled out Taol, possibly because she was the only one who wasn't cowed. "Tell me, who is your commander?"

"You are," Taol said.

That got a laugh out of him and Atroposus. One thing that Jiralhanae and Sangheili shared in common, neither thought that joke got old.

"Your shipmaster is dead," Marsangtus said. "Tell me, who is next in command?"

"The shipmaster's mate," Taol replied. "Your warriors killed her too."

"And under her?"

"The bosun. He was on the ship. What did you do to him?"

Marsangtus snarled and seized her by the neck. Quick as lightning, Taol pointed to Quatch.

"You want him."

Those words hit like lightning. Quatch was in command now. In terms of time served on the ship or personal closeness with the Shipmaster, Quatch was the most junior of the officers. He was fourth in command on paper, but that hadn't mattered. Not until now. That was why half of his shipmates had been giving him strange looks. That's why Nak was calling him chief. The old man was too proud to ask someone eighty years his junior for orders, and Quatch had been too stupid to catch the hints.

Marsangtus shifted his gaze to Quatch. So did everyone else in earshot. Quatch felt a sudden draft as his loyal shipmates backed away from him.

"You," the chieftain said. "Tell me your name."

"Quatch, from the Tennbau clan," Quatch said as he brought himself to his full height. The chieftain tapped his shoulder with a bayonet, and it took all of the Kig-Yar's will to not flinch.

"You bear the branding of a warrior," the Jiralhanae mused, referring to the pattern of ring-shaped tattoos that spanned Quatch's shoulder blades and spread up his neck. "When did you serve?"

"Ten years ago, by the holy calendar. I fought under Field Marshal 'Ualothamee in the Select Fleet of Tempered Resolve."

The Brute laughed. "Rejoice!" he yelled to the other Kig-Yar, loud enough to make some jump in fright. "Here is a warrior who drew first blood on the shores of Bathtet! He shall lead you through what is to come!"

Quatch felt cold dread well up in his stomach. Bathtet. The world where the Humans built a coastal fuel refinery the size of a city. Seven legions landed to claim those fuel-rich seas for the Covenant war machine, and the _56 Dasim of Eayn Dragoons_ led the assault from the beach. Quatch only remembered those first three days as a chaotic tangle of briney water, burning dropships, and the twisted remains of unfathomable Human machinery.

He glanced over to the _Libation_ , which the Brutes were loading with weapons and crates of supplies. He imagined the _Libation_ storming the shores of Bathtet under the withering fire of the Human stutter-guns. It was a freight hauler. It wouldn't survive long. Hell, his crewmates wouldn't last long either. They would all have died on those cold shores, and their bodies would have washed out with the tide.

"Above us is the Spire of Reunion and Want, which even now the Sangheili hold. Our brethren call for aid! In the name of Truth and Mercy, for the memory of Regret, we shall join battle and crush them!"

"But we have no weapons!" someone shouted. Bel, one of the cargo handlers.

"And I trust you with none," the chieftain said with a smirk that bared his fangs. "When we land, you all will be the first off the ship. You will draw fire from my warriors and take ground as I command. If you survive, you shall have earned a place at my side."

"And you," the chieftain said, rounding on Quatch. He took a plasma pistol from his belt and offered it grip-first. "You will watch over them."

Quatch accepted the pistol, or tried to. Marsangtus wouldn't let it go.

"You will inspire them in battle, and you will shoot any who flee the fight," the chieftain said, his voice a low growl. "Or my warriors will kill every last one of you and throw the bodies into the void."

Quatch glanced over his shoulder. His shipmates stared back at him in horror.

He turned back to the chieftain, whose grin now spread from one cheekguard to the other. This was power, and the Brute knew it. Quatch wanted nothing more than to take the pistol and shoot that smug son of a whore dead. But he figured there was a better-than-even chance that Marsangtus would live long enough to lop his head off before succumbing to his wounds. And then every other Brute in the dock would draw their weapons and hose down this whole corner. The rest of the crew would die as surely as if Quatch himself put the gun to their heads and pulled the trigger.

Quatch owed them. He was the one with combat experience. He was now the senior officer of the _Libation_ , and it was his duty to see his people to safety. In that moment, Quatch resolved that he'd find a way out. He would go along with the Jiral's mad plan only until he found a break, a third option. Something was going to come along and draw the Brute's undivided attention, and he would get every last one of his shipmates away from this insanity.

"I'll serve you," he lied. The chieftain released the pistol and said something, but Quatch didn't hear it. He was distracted by the haunting wail of his break approaching, and he cursed it. It was too soon, there was no chance to get the other Kig-Yar ready-

"Well?" Marsangtus asked.

"Banshees," Quatch said, looking out toward the tip of the spire.

The chieftain snarled and drew his bayonet, suspecting some kind of trick from the boatswain. Then he heard it too.

"To arms!" he bellowed. "Singleships on the approach! Draw arms and fend them off!"

The _Libation_ rested in a sectioned dock. The dock was designed to handle ships much larger than a medium freighter, but was built with partitions so that it could service many smaller vessels. Those partitions were thick and bristled with machinery, but did not rise all the way to the outer skin of the spire. There was enough room for a patrol corvette to pass above them.

A pair of singleships popped over the partition. They were single-man attack craft with stubby wings tipped with gravetic engines that glowed bright blue. Twin plasma cannons spat a lance of blue fire that cut wide paths across the deck. Brutes died. Crates caught fire and burst apart. A cart of looted machinery vanished in a green explosion that rattled the deckplates.

The rest of the Brute pack drew their weapons and returned fire. Some raced out of cover to get a better shot. The chieftain already had his longarm spiker up, and he was pumping one heavy spike after another into the nearest singleship.

This was the best chance he might get.

Heart hammering in his throat, Quatch lowered his pistol and double-tapped the Brute in the back of the knee. The unarmored joint exploded into ash and strips of hairy flesh.

The Brute bellowed as his leg gave out and he toppled to the floor. Quatch's follow-up shots to the head splashed across the Brute's helmet, and in desperation the Kig-Yar switched targets and blew off Marsangtus's right hand.

"Run!" Quatch screeched. "Over there to the lower levels!"

The other Kig-Yar were stunned by the sudden violence, and many were on their knees. They scrambled to their feet, but not fast enough for him. He hauled Nak and the cargo chief upright and gave them a shove in the right direction. "Go, go, go!"

Atroposus was turning, his plasma repeater venting heat, but Taol was already upon him. She ducked under his swing, scrambled up his back, and drove a long knife into his neck.

The Kig-Yar were confused, frightened, and they weren't following him. They were scattering. Some ran for the ship, and some ran for cover. Quatch yelled again, but that only drew attention from the other Jiralhanae, so he cursed and sprinted for the turnwise edge of the dock.

Already, spikes and plasma bolts were sailing their way.

He saw two of the cargo handlers change their minds halfway to the _Libation_ and curve to follow him, only to be cut down in the open. He saw Lan and Heik carrying Yann. He saw Taol leap off Atroposus, leaving her knife buried to the hilt in his shoulder.

And he saw the second pair of strike craft pop over the partition. That was the oldest trick in the book, and he was surprised the Brutes fell for it. The first pair comes in fast and low to provoke ground fire, goading the defenders to reveal their position for the second pair.

The fleeing sailors were caught in a hailstorm of spikes and bolts of red energy. Red-hot darts missed Quatch by a finger's width. Others weren't so lucky. He saw his friends cut down in the crossfire. Their names flashed through his head as they fell to the deck. Hanhe. Buce. Bel. Hok. He couldn't help them. He was too near to panic, and long-dormant combat instincts were taking over.

Quatch reached the end of the dock unscathed and jumped off. He landed hard and rolled to a stop on top of Taol, and then he shoved off her quickly in case she had any more knives.

The first thing he noticed was the quiet. The battle was still raging on the dock, and it sounded like Sangheili rangers had joined the fight. There came battlecries and scattered fire overhead, but down here the crew had time to gather their wits.

This was a utility storage deck, which was to say that it was a quiet space between the elevated dock and a highway where odds and ends tended to accumulate. Canisters of Unggoy food were stacked next to pipelines full of fuel, reactor coolant, and fresh air. Pallets of machine parts were piled high and sealed in tamper-proof wrap.

Quatch took a quick headcount. There was him, and Taol, and Nak, Kess, and Don hiding behind a large engine core due for the recyclers. And Bon with his fellow keelworkers Dith and Tal, the latter of which had grabbed the chieftain's longarm spiker. Lan and Heik both made it, but Yann was mewling in pain from a spike that had torn through her arm. Sap and Cam were turning over Val… who was dead. Landed hard and broke his neck, from the looks of it. Rounding it off was Tair and Dwe, hiding behind an empty crate.

Fifteen. Out of thirty two crewmembers he'd promised to save.

And Quatch's job wasn't over yet.

He checked the charge on his plasma pistol and stepped out onto the highway. It was empty, when it should have been chock full of road trains running to the heart of High Charity, or the great cities at the crown. But that was before this outbreak of madness.

"We've got to find someplace to hole up and listen for what's going on. We can't stay here," Quatch said to the others.

He beckoned with the plasma pistol. Force of habit. He was used to wearing a shield gauntlet on the other arm.

"Let's go."

* * *

 **A/N: Well, here we go.**

 **It's been six years, give or take. Six long years since I last published anything. Now I'm back.**

 **I've got to love a fictional universe to write for it, and I fell out of love with Halo sometime before Halo 4 arrived. The things that drew me to Halo are gone. They've fallen to the wayside, and what 343i has published since then has been one long chain of rushed plotlines and missed opportunities.**

 **Of course, instead of moving on, I spent six years complaining about things I don't like. Now, I'm done complaining. In this story and others, I'm going to try writing Halo as it could have been. This isn't a story about Spartans or Forerunners returned from the grave. It's not even about biggatons, which is probably going to be a hard sell on Spacebattles. It's a story about ordinary people surviving the collapse of the greatest empire in the galaxy. It's a story about soldiers and civilians fighting to preserve their world, or struggling to rebuild in the ashes. It's about outcasts on a journey for fortune or glory, or a quiet piece of land to call home.**

 **Basically, this story treats just the pre-343i stories as canon, as well as most of the books written by Greg Bear. Whatever else the guys in charge at 343i have done, they deserve nothing but praise for hiring him to write those books.**

 **Aside from that… well, Jul 'Mdama could be considered one of those wasted opportunities. But that's a story for another time.**

 **I'm posting this story here, but you can also find it on the Spacebattles forums, along with worldbuilding snippets and, eventually, artwork.**


	2. Becalmed In Hell

**_"Long have I thought about the Jiralhanae, and their sudden elevation. How did they fight so well? How did they earn such dear victory in the early hours of the Great Schism? T_** ** _hey came to the Mendicant City prepared for war. Our garrison forces were unprepared in body and in spirit, and so they were vanquished at little cost to the Jiralhanae..."_**

 ** _"...Had not the Parasite interrupted their plans for conquest, I fear that they would have taken High Charity. To the shame of my ancestors by blood and by heritage, they would have conquered High Charity."_**

 ** _Field Marshall Oular 'Kandonomee, recorded in his second volume of his untitled memoirs._**

* * *

 **Evening period, Fiefdom Port of Clan 'Umtalla**

It had been years since Quatch had heard the sound of an army on the move.

Armor clanked, engines whined, orders and oaths were shouted to and fro. The footsteps of marching warriors echoed up and down the highway that led to the pier, ringing off the bulkheads to either side and the ceiling above. Traction sleds, used to carry cargo in every port in the Covenant empire, now bore Jiralhanae warriors by the dozens. Alongside them ran lances of Unggoy and Kig-Yar and the Jiralhanae privileged to lead other species into battle.

The noise they made bore down on Quatch like a physical object, drowning out the distant crumps of battle that rattled the deck beneath his hooves. The worst was the battlesong, a call-and-response in rough warrior cant.

 _"_ _We took up arms for Tartarus!"_ a warband leader sang, his words rendered harshly by audio amplifiers as big as coffins.

 _"_ _Sons of Dosiac!"_ came the thunderous reply from hundreds of Brutes.

 _"_ _We pledged ourselves in life and death to the Fist!"_ the officer cried.

 _"_ _Blood of Dosiac, ready to be shed_!" the ranks responded.

Both the officer and his warriors sang in unison to a cadence Quatch knew well.

 _"_ _Though the Fist was the first martyr,_

 _we will follow him even now!_

 _We'll quarter the Sangheili who slew him,_

 _and we'll slaughter ten million more!_

 _With our lives we will avenge_

 _the victims of the heretic hordes._

 _We live, we die, we'll be reborn!_

 _The first ranks of the Great Journey,_

 _vanguards of the Covenant faith!"_

Any song sang by hundreds of Brutes in a closed area would be loud, and this one shook dust from the ceiling. Worse than that, it made Quatch's blood run cold. He pushed himself deeper into cover and further out of sight, which was a feat since fifteen other Kig-Yar were hiding back there too. When the crew heard the legion coming, they ran for a service hallway, used by Yanme'e stevedores and Unggoy slaves to get around. But the door was shut, and whoever was on the other side refused to unlock it.

So they hid in the gap between a crate and the bulkhead, praying that none would notice them. All it would take was one warrior to look back the way he'd come, to peer into the shadows by the access door.

Quatch looked down the gap to Taol, who stared back. Between them were fourteen sailors at the very brink of hysteria. Nak was gnawing on an unlit thallit stick. Pem was hugging his stolen longarm spiker as if it was his long-lost brother, and Bon was braiding a length of cable together, either fashioning a weapon or just working off nervous energy.

Beside him, Lan and Heik were probably the worst. Lan was still like a bead of glass in a vice, the feathers in her mane twitching in ripples. Heik could see the legion of Brutes just as well as Quatch could, and the battle hymn was getting to him. The radio operator slumped to the floor and clamped his hands over his ears.

Quatch was terrified. He also felt his bile rise. The warrior cant the Brutes sang in was the same one he'd learned in his time in the legion, a creole of Pan Sangheili diluted with words common to Kig-Yar, Unggoy, and Jiralhanae tongues. The cadence of their oath was the same as the Litany of Salvation in Hardship, and the Creed of the Airborne, and the battle honors of the 56 Dasim of Eayn Dragoons. He'd sung those tunes a dozen times or more, crammed with his cohort into the belly of a dropship as it carried them to an uncertain fate.

He remembered the faith those songs had kindled within him, the sense of companionship that had grown in those dark hours. Even though he would shortly be thrown into battle against the condemned Humans, and though he was led by madmen who thirsted for suicidal glory, he was not alone.

It was different now. The song echoed up and down the hall, so loud and overwhelming, and he felt so very alone.

The noise abated as the sled that bore the warband leader and his amplifiers disappeared around the corner. Now the Brutes that marched past shouted boasts to one another, and fired their guns overhead in jubilation. Gun carriages and assault support vehicles threaded their way through the ranks, followed by a clanking four-legged excavation crawler of all things.

The warriors on foot thinned out and the battlesong faded, and for a moment Quatch dared to think the worst was over.

Then a massive Jiralhanae warrior lumbered around the corner.

Quatch heard a gasp, the quick breath before a scream. Quick as lightning, he clamped his hand around Heik's beak. The signalman choked and snorted, as loud as thunder to Quatch's ears.

The Brute stood there, peering into the shadows. Quatch imagined he could see those eyes glittering under the brim of his helmet, daring him to panic, like an apex predator waiting for its prey to bolt so it could enjoy the thrill of the chase.

And even though the singers were gone, their bloodthirsty song still grated on Quatch's nerves. He could hear its echo in the blood pounding in his ears.

The Jiralhanae cleared his throat.

Quatch slowly reached for the pistol hanging from his belt loop.

And Heik sneezed.

That would have been the end of them if the Jiral himself didn't explode into a coughing fit at the same time. He doubled over and coughed so hard his armor plates rattled against each other. When he was done, he spat into the corner and turned to stand sentry. It was only then that Quatch got a good look at his face. Half of the warrior's face was covered in savage cuts that wept blood, from claws or shrapnel the Boatswain couldn't tell. One of the Brute's eyes was swollen shut. He was half-blind, and probably couldn't hear much over the agony of his wounds.

Quatch saw that his crewmates were staring at him, either looking to him for guidance or waiting for a hail of spikes to pin him to the wall. He smiled and leaned over to Lan. "We're not out from under the knife yet, but if we stay silent, this bastard can't see us."

That did something for her. The feathers in her mane calmed, and she turned to whisper to Bon.

Quatch watched the news spread down the line, sailor to sailor. The three keelworkers passed the message to each other with whispered words and hand signals that Quatch couldn't read, and the last one in line passed it on to Dwe, who closed her eyes and made the sign of soulful gratitude before telling Tair. The atmosphere in the narrow gap changed from near panic to relief, so that the sailors at the end were becalmed before the news ever reached them. And Taol went from concerned to… less concerned. Which was a big change for her.

Nak took out a lighter and tapped it inquisitively against his thallit stick. Quatch clicked his beak in the negative. He was sure that the old man was joking, and if he wasn't, then his exaggerated disappointment was a wonderful save.

Quatch turned back to the highway, and wondered why such a crippled warrior was stationed as a sentry. Was he a fanatic, or sworn to a callous commander? Even the most hidebound warriors Quatch ever had the misfortune of serving under would have considered such grievous wounds grounds for days of rest.

The answer coasted into view. It was a large traction sled, the kind used to carry large starship components, and the bed was piled high with loot. Crates, clothes, machines and urns of beer, the wealth of thousands of worlds. And that was just in the first sled. Two more followed in its wake, flanked by assault vehicles and troop carriers, and then came the irregulars.

Wave upon wave of Kig-Yar and Unggoy marched after the loot wagons, though if Quatch had ever marched with such poor form in the Dragoons, he would have been beaten. They slouched and skipped and adjusted armor that they were clearly unaccustomed to wearing. They were civilians looted from the city, and they would either be cannon fodder or slaves. Jiralhanae barrier troops marched alongside them, herding them with harsh words and the lash.

Quatch sat down next to Heik, fearing that one of the warriors would glance in this direction and see him. Heik tried to pry Quatch's fingers off his beak, so Quatch gave him a good shake until he stopped.

Heik would have to be patient. They all did. They would get out of this mess just fine so long as they waited for the right moment.

Waiting was the hardest part of all.

Too hard for some of the crew, apparently. Bon pushed past Lan and peeked around the corner. Quatch motioned for him to get back in cover, but was ignored. Bon studied the procession for a while, and when he was done he pulled a grease marker from his coveralls, wrote the interrogative glyph _"_ _Next?"_ on the shipping container, and offered the marker to Quatch.

Quatch took the marker and wrote _"_ _Stay and wait."_

 _"_ _What's the plan, Chief?"_ Even in writing, Bon's habitual sarcasm bled through. There was a line by the symbol for "chief" that could either be the diacritic for newly bestowed status, or the diacritic that indicated a temporary nature.

Quatch circled his previous statement and added _"_ _Until Brutes are gone."_ Then he scratched off the diacritic with his thumb.

 _"_ _Could take a long time,"_ Bon wrote.

 _"_ _Not that long. Once was pinned down by artillery and airstrikes in the legions. Three days."_

Quatch kept writing. It wasn't a good memory, but he'd already made peace with it, and the act of writing it down kept his mind off the Brutes. Besides, as long as he held the marker, he didn't have to read Bon's bellyaching. _"_ _Three days cooped up in a cellar built by the Humans as their artillery shelled our half of the city. Shell strikes like earthquakes. Our shelter caved in on the second day, but we dared not reposition. The barrages halted only to let their armor advance. I saw Mgalekgolo and strike teams battle the Human growlers and creepers in the street outside our pile of rubble. That time passed. So will this."_

Bon snorted in frustration and turned to walk away, but Quatch grabbed him by the shoulder.

 _"_ _Can you talk to the others with hand signals?"_

Bon fished another grease marker out of his coveralls and wrote _"_ _Yes. Why?"_

Quatch showed him the communication unit strapped to his wrist. The whole crew had them, either wrist-mounted and stowed away in pockets. The casters couldn't talk to each other directly. Instead, their communiques were relayed through the _Libation's_ comm mast, and were therefore independent of the port's infrastructure. And Quatch's unit couldn't find a signal.

 _"_ _The_ Libation _is gone,"_ he wrote.

 _"_ _What about local channels?"_ Bon replied.

 _"_ _I don't trust the local channels,"_ Quatch wrote. Bon clicked his teeth and circled that statement.

 _"_ _We can talk with keelworker signals,"_ Bon wrote. _"_ _I'll tell the others."_

 _"_ _You stay with me, Dith stays with Taol, Pem and the others stay with Nak. Taol and I scout forward, Nak's group stays behind. If I am lost, Taol takes command, then Nak. Pass it on,"_

Bon circled Taol's name and added an interrogative. Quatch ignored him. He knew that wasn't going to be a popular decision; Taol wasn't well-liked by the rest of the crew. But she was crafty, and besides Quatch she was the only one with any military experience.

 _"_ _You've got a plan?"_ Bon asked?

 _"_ _We run away or we hide. For now, we wait."_

* * *

 **Midday, Hidden in the Upper Moorage**

Burning with shame and rage, young P'thon 'Umtalla vowed that he would would run no more. He vowed a swift and bloody end to the Jiralhanae who taken the dock and slaughtered his kin, and he swore that he would take up arms and personally correct the family's fatal mistake.

He wasn't a warrior, not yet. His blooding years were nearly here, or they would be in a time of relative peace. Like every other of his male kin who came of age, he was to be pledged to the service of a shipmaster known to his family. Serving aboard his warship, he would learn the virtues and earn the honor that his family's status dictated. He would learn naval strategy and grand tactics, how to fight pirates and how to curry favor with the Ministries. Above all, he would learn the art of logistics, how to keep open the supply lines that feed a navy on the move.

Only when he proved his merit would his kin take him back. Then he would learn a new life, the life of a merchant and manager of the family's vast fortune. This was true of all the Umtalla men. The Umtalla family's naval tradition was long and broad, and their connections to the officer corps of their home sector were deep and personal. From this, the family had profited handsomely even before they came to High Charity. After all, did warriors not need to eat? Did their weapons spring from the ground? No, it was sold to them, and the Umtalla's keen knowledge of naval affairs had turned the tide of a dozen wars.

But for all that experience, not a single Umtalla warrior in living memory had ever fought in a ground war. And so, when the Jiralhanae horde marched onto the family's dock, P'thon's kin were blown away like leaves in the wind. The young Sangheili had watched helplessly as his mother and his brothers were cut down in the crossfire, and it was cold comfort that his closest uncle had taken him by the nape of the neck and ordered him to run and hide. He was too young to fight.

Anger coursed through his veins, hot and impotent anger. He couldn't fight, and he was afraid to die, and he hated himself for it. He crept in the shadows like a loathsome insect, scurrying through the halls reserved for the stevedores as the hairy savages destroyed the world he knew. He hated the Brutes for slaughtering his family and plundering their warehouses like animals. But he couldn't stand up to them. He wasn't even sure he could take a lone Brute on his own. And, shamefully, he hated his own family for dying so easily. Even the Umtalla, a merchant clan, acknowledged that war was the true measure of the Sangheili. How could they just lay down and die without felling a single Jiralhanae?

But P'thon would avenge them. The Heirarchs themselves had gone mad and sparked a civil war, one which would not soon be over. P'thon intended to take one of his family's finest vessels, one of the convoy escorts. He couldn't run it on his own, and he didn't have the resources to keep it going in a time of war, but he could sell it to someone who did. With that money, he could outfit an entire legion of the Covenant's finest warriors, and then he would find the Field Master to lead them into battle. The young Sangheili would learn how to wage battle, the bloody and violent art of the infantry, and when he was a learned man he would seek out the Brute who killed his family.

For that reason, P'thon stayed in the shadows long enough to hear the Jiralhanae warriors chant the name of their chieftain. Then he crept through back alleys and the tunnels reserved for the Yanme'e stevedores until he reached the highest of the Umtalla clan's docks, the ones reserved for the fast ships and the convoy escorts. The Silent Resolution-class escorts lay in their cradles like predatory fish held in suspended animation. Their engines, though cold, were swift and powerful, and their weapons were the sort that commerce raiders feared. And P'thon, young as he was, knew how to fly them.

But the Jiralhanae had beaten him there.

The young Sangheili watched in disbelief as the hairy warriors took up guard positions at the entrance to the dock, and three more marched to a convoy escort. It was the near one, the _Dying Vow of Rhi 'Umtalla_. He expected the Brutes to batter down the main airlock with their fists, or cut it open if they were particularly intelligent for their species. Instead, the lead one with silver fur pulled a severed arm from a bag and waved it under the airlock's biometric scanner.

The scanner whined. The airlock doors flashed crimson light and went still. Nothing else happened.

The silver-furred Brute tried again, with as much success.

One of the other warriors suggested that he massage the arm to get the blood flowing. The tawny Brute snarled at him to shut up. Again and again he submitted the severed arm for the scanner's inspection, to the same level of success.

P'thon didn't know how the Brutes beat him to this dock or from whom they learned of the biometric locks, but he wasn't about to stay and find out. There were two convoy escorts in the dock, and the far one was as yet unguarded. He'd steal that one, but he needed a distraction. Something to draw the Brutes' attention.

He looked around his corner of the dock, where all the regular supplies were kept. He was hidden among barrels of lubricant and specialized heat transfer fluid, and further away were barrels of cleaning solvent. The young Sangheili had plenty to work with.

P'thon stalked through the barrels and tanks like a shadow until he came to a barrel full of oxygen-scrubbing chemical. That would do. He pried at the spigot with a hard knife until a seam gave way and cold liquid poured out, and then he left a small plasma blade lying on the floor nearby. The liquid washed over the blade moments later, vaporized, and then caught fire. A loud report rang out through the dock. Sheets of flame and oily black smoke rose through the equipment racks to the ceiling above. A cry of alarm rose up from the Brutes, soon drowned out by the fire suppression systems.

By then, P'thon was sprinting through the shadows beneath the cradles, hearts hammering, the taste of blood in his mouth. He could almost hear his family's battlehymn as he swung around a pylon and drew a bead on the escort's airlock. This sprint, he knew, were the first steps on the long road to revenge, and he savored every one.

White hot pain lanced through his right leg, and his feet went out from under him. P'thon stumbled and fell to the ground in a heap.

He tried to get up, but his leg wouldn't respond. More pain washed over him every time he tried to move. The young scion of the 'Umtalla clan looked down and saw a pair of red-hot spikes embedded to the bone in his thigh.

A shadow fell across him. P'thon thought it was the silver-furred Brute, but the pain battered him like waves against the shore, and his thoughts were carried away on the tide. He felt the Brute lift him by the arm, and he saw the Jiralhanae smile cruelly as he inspected the tattoo on P'thon's wrist, and he heard the Jiralhanae growl in satisfaction.

"You'll do."

* * *

 **A/N: This took a long time to write, and I wound up cutting some of it for review.  
Two weeks after I posted the first chapter, I got a summer job with long hours and long weeks. It took me a while to get free time to write, and a while after that to get back in the groove. Hell, there's a scene in the next chapter that I rewrote four or five times before it finally clicked, and I'm still not 100% satisfied with it.**

 **Trust me, eight months between chapters is not going to be the norm for this story.**

 **It's a new year. Overall, a lot of good things have happened, and I think it's only going to get better from here.**


	3. Graveyard Shift

**Historical Note: _Quite understandably, primary accounts of the first day of the Great Schism are hard to come by. The sudden escalation of the conflict caught many observers by surprise, and the complete loss of High Charity means that the traditional methods will never be able to fully separate fact from rumor._**

 _ **Project Footprint is deeply indebted to the Umtalla clan for opening their archives to our researchers. Their presence on High Charity was extensive, but the bulk of the family's mercantile and recordkeeping operations were based on their homeworld. The final, apocalyptic messages from the doomed station were meticulously catalogued by the annalist. Working with his successor, our research team was able to confirm a number of legends about the final hours of the Covenant's most holy city.**_

* * *

 **Evening Period, Fiefdom Port of Clan Umtalla**

Quatch had never seen a battlefield from this angle. Not the aftermath, anyway.

The Brutes passed through the port offices on their way to the docks. The merchant family that held this section of the spire as a fiefdom had fought back. Poorly. Puddles of blood from dead Sangheili and their Yanme'e stevodores littered the ground where they'd fallen, and there was not a sign of a single dead Jiral to be seen. Now that the fighting was over, the victorious Brutes were pillaging. Smoke leaked out of the windows of the office buildings, and hairy warriors were plundering one warehouse after another.

Overhead, unseen, Quatch and Bon clambered up a decorative arch that landed on the roof of the port authority.

"Don't look down," Quatch whispered.

"We're not that high," Bon replied curtly.

"I'm not worried about heights," Quatch replied, looking at a row of Sangheili corpses. Execution hadn't been enough for the Jiralhanae. The corpses were dismembered as well, and likely belonged to the very young or very old who couldn't fight back.

Brute warriors wandered around, directing empty hovercarts and carts full of loot from the warehouses. They were in a state Quatch had learned to fear in his time in the Legion; drunk on victory as they came down from their bloodlust, at once joyful and gregarious yet prone to fits of cruel violence. A pair of them were laughing, pounding fists and helmets, while a third took potshots at dark corners where survivors might be hiding. The pair stopped a cart and flipped it over before the driver could scramble out of the cab, and then they laughed harder.

It at times like this that Quatch and his fellow Kig-Yar learned to make themselves scarce. The Brutes were more of a danger to their fellow warriors after a crushing victory than they were when they were roaring drunk.

Quatch shuddered and kept climbing. Lights were out and smoke filled the air, but he was likely to be spotted by any warrior who looked up. Just a little bit more, and they would reach the roof. Just a little bit more until he and Bon were safely out of sight.

* * *

 **Evening Period, Office of Jarl ur 'Umtalla**

The office of the port authority was low and squat, shorter than the control tower down the street but undeniably the center of the Umtalla clan's activity. It looked like a stronghold, but that simply reflected the Sangheili taste for thick walls and arrowslit windows. The inside was more like a palace, richly furnished with exotic hardwood and alloy tiles. What impressed Quatch the most when he first visited were the holograms.

The holograms rose from the windows like shafts of light reflected from a harsh yellow sun, and another, larger hologram speared down from the oculus in the roof. One by one, they brightened and dimmed, and they all tracked from east to west as if simulating daytime on a faraway world. The holograms from the arrowslits displayed the names and statuses of each of the ships docked in port, and the one from the oculus extolled the virtuous acts of the family's long-dead ancestors. Parables written in spidery script wreathed the images of these exemplars, exhorting the living to live up to their name.

There was nobody left alive to heed those holograms, which was just as well, because the holograms were out too. From his perch on a second-story windowsill, Quatch could only see one shaft spearing up from the lower level, flickering on and off in the haze that filled the office.

Bon came in behind Quatch, looked around, and hissed a long curse. Quatch didn't blame him. Machines were smashed, desks torn up and thrown aside, and smears of blood showed where bodies had been dragged to the balcony and thrown down.

"Where now?" Bon asked.

"We're where we need to be," Quatch said. The ground level was where clerks and inspectors did their business with outsiders. The second level was where the Umatala family conducted their own business. The upper level encircled a large atrium, so that the elders could monitor their inferiors. It was typical Sangheili architecture.

"Look around, find someplace for the others to hide," Quatch ordered.

"In here?" Bon was incredulous.

"The Brutes are finished in here. They won't come back. And whatever you do, don't look down there."

Plasma pistol at the ready, Quatch stalked through the mess of overturned desks. Broken dataslates and vellum contract pages crinkled underfoot, where they weren't matted down by bloodstains and bloody footprints.

In his mind's eye, he could see how the fight went down. The largest and heaviest desks lay askew by the stairway, clearly dragged there to serve as a barricade. There, the noble defenders readied what weapons they possessed (and knowing the Sangheili, there was an arsenal somewhere nearby, or they'd all keep blades in their desks) and vowed to defend their territory to the last. The Brutes suppressed the defenders with gunfire and a volley of grenades, then they charged the barricade and effortlessly shoved the desks aside. Then they laid into the poorly armed and unarmored defenders with unspeakable savagery. Blades, fists and teeth. That was the Jiralhanae way.

It was the way of the Sangheili too. To them, there was no distinction between soldiers and civilians. Both fought as was required of them, and anyone who refused to fight was a coward and a criminal. They would have fought to their dying breath, no matter how hopelessly outmatched they were.

Quatch stared at the harbormaster, beheaded and pinned to the wall with a spear. What kind of lunatic, he wondered, would consider that to be dying with honor?

There were rooms at the far end of the office. Quatch searched them one after another. The first was a lavatory, and it looked like the Brutes had thrown a bundle of grenades through the door rather than search the stalls.

The next two were conference rooms, which the Brutes had largely left alone. The last one…

The last one was a kitchen. Not a large one, just big enough to prepare meals to serve the workers at their desks. Quatch's stomach groaned, and he remembered that he hadn't eaten since that morning. It wouldn't hurt, he thought, to search this room a bit more thoroughly.

Another part of him said to simply stuff his mouth and take what he could carry. That was the hard, selfish part of him, born in the days when the Legion's rations were thin and the supply lines uncertain. The Brutes had ransacked the kitchen, but they were amateurs. Quatch was a learned master of the art of scrounging for food.

Before Quatch could properly search, he heard a noise like a man choking to death and ran for the door. In the darkness, he saw that Bon was running too, huddled over and dry-heaving as he dashed away from the balcony. He must have looked.

"Bon!" Quatch snarled. "Bon!"

The keelworker skidded to a stop and looked at Quatch, blinking as if to wipe away what he'd just seen.

"If I say that something is a bad idea, I'm not just clicking my beak." Quatch said. "Come on, I need you to signal to the others."

Dazed, Bon followed in his wake. Quatch didn't much care for Bon or his bluster, but he had to admit that this was the first time he'd ever seen Bon rattled.

"You knew," Bon hissed. "Do Brutes always- with the bodies, they-"

"It's called a charnel house," Quatch said as he surveyed the street below. There was nobody to be seen, and no sign of the Jiralhanae. "Now tell the others to come up as quietly as possible. Single file up the arch, not through the ground floor."

Bon waved his hands at the darkness, and someone in the darkness waved back. Soon, about a dozen Kig-Yar were clambering up the arch toward the roof.

This was the moment Quatch dreaded. If anything could go wrong, it would be here, when everyone was out in the open and Quatch couldn't help them. All he could do was watch and wait for a Brute's cry of alarm. Then they'd all die in a crossfire of grenades and hot spikes.

But then they were all on the roof and coming down through the window one after another, and Quatch was sorting them as they came through.

"Dwe, go hide in there, second door from the left," he ordered, pointing toward the conference room. "Sap, Cam, Kess, follow Dwe and stay quiet. Heik, stay here. You too, Lan. Nak, you and Pem follow Kess, and keep them calm. Hide in that room and don't move until I come for you. Don, I need you and Tair over in that kitchen, far door down. Find something for us all to eat. If there's enough, pack the rest up to go, we aren't staying here long."

"Something to eat?" Don asked. "From a Sangheili kitchen?"

"That's what Tair is for," Quatch said. "She's worked in a restaurant."

"That doesn't mean I know what's edible. It's Sangheili food!" Tair said.

"Figure it out!" Quatch snarled as the last two crewmembers swung through the window. "Taol and Dith… Where's Yann?"

"He's safe," Taol replied.

"How safe?"

"If I told you that I slit his throat and stashed him under a bus, would you quit worrying?"

Quatch had to think about that one. "You didn't really slit his throat, did you?"

"Yes," she said flatly.

" _Dith,_ " Quatch asked, turning toward the other Kig Yar.

"We didn't slit his throat!" the keelworker protested. "He's fine! He's fine! Well, he lost consciousness again, but his vitals were good. I think. He's not bleeding again. We left him behind a-"

"Yes, fine," Quatch said, holding up a hand. "You two watch the stairs. Taol, keep him quiet. It's ugly down there."

Taol clicked her beak in acknowledgement, though that motion was cold and mechanical. That was the way she was, ever since her time in the Legion. She didn't' feel fear, and she didn't feel much else either. She was remote, like a distant ship or smoke on the horizon, but most days she put on a good show of being normal.

In times like these, the mask slipped off.

Quatch wanted nothing more than to take her aside and ask how she was doing. But that would only undermine her standing in front of the others, and definitely annoy her too.

"Stay safe," he said, but she had already gone.

"Heik, find a quiet corner and patch into the Agora. I need to hear any news you can find. I need to know what's going on out there. And Lan…"

Lan Esaki looked at Quatch like a critter caught in sudden torchlight. Lan was the ship's junior pipeliner. Her job was to diagnose and repair, if she could, the machinery aboard the _Libation_. If anyone could pull data out of a broken computer, it was her.

"Lan, I need you to find a ship."

"Find a ship?" she asked. "We came all this way to find a ship? We could have done that out in the docks."

"How many of those ships are ready to cast off?" Quatch asked. "Which ones have provisions for Kig-Yar? Can't tell from out there until we pry an airlock open. We can search the records in here, lie low in the meantime."

"The Brutes own these docks, Chief," Nak said. The old T'vaoan worked his beak, as if looking for the right words. "Maybe we should keep moving."

"Keep moving?" Quatch asked, though he'd seen that suggestion coming. He knew his crewmates. He'd worked with them for the better part of a decade. They would fight to defend what was theirs, but they weren't pirates. "Where should we go?"

"It's a big station," Nak said.

"I know it's a big station. Where, in particular, can we go?"

"The docks on Yis-level," Heik suggested. "They're owned by the Szethoat clan. They might take us in."

"We've got no money, and we've got no ship," Bon said. "They're not going to help us. Nobody is."

"Then we hide," Nak said. "All we have to do is wait out the fighting."

"We'd starve," Quatch said.

Everyone, even Bon, stared at him incredulously.

"The fight's not going to last that long," Nak said.

"Civil wars usually do."

"It's not a civil war!" Nak protested. "Not a proper one! It's the Jirals against the Sangheili. There can't be that many of the hairy barbarians in all of High Charity!"

"The Brutes are going to be crushed," Heik agreed.

"One Hierarch is dead, and the other two have thrown their lot in with the Jiralhanae," Quatch said. "When they're all put down, there will be another civil war to determine who the next triumvirate will be."

"There's two sides today," Bon said. "I'd bet your life there's a dozen tomorrow."

"It won't be that bad," Heik said. He didn't sound convinced of his own words.

"Tell you what," Bon said. "When we leave this dump, why don't you stick around and see just how peaceful an interregnum can be."

"Look here, the discussion is over," Quatch snarled. "Heik, tune into the Agora and listen for news. Nak, get over there and keep the others quiet. Lan, come with me."

Quatch stormed off into the ruins of the office. Lan fell in behind him, and so did Bon. He led them to a heavy desk near the Harbormaster's decapitated corpse.

"Right here," he said. "The Harbormaster's terminal should have access to records and manifests. Maybe we can forge a title here."

"Maybe," Lan said, walking around the desk. She ran her hands over the hologram projectors and the other devices set into the hardwood. Most of them were broken, and a small forest of metal spikes were embedded in the desktop. "The damage looks superficial. If this is a terminal, it doesn't store any records. They'll be kept in a central computer, which the Brutes might have missed."

"Where would that be?" Quatch asked.

"Doubtlessly, someplace where the Harbormaster could keep an eye on it," Lan said. She drew a knife from her coveralls, buried it in the side of the desk, and pried a panel loose. "Right here, yes,"

She drew more tools out of her coveralls. She was a T'vaoan, from a similar denomination to Nak, which meant that she wore a particular style of coveralls loaded with all the tools of her profession. But she was a pipeliner, a technician who diagnosed and repaired sanctioned technology. She'd had a whole cart full of tools, and another full of reference manuals, both of which were left on the _Libation_.

Quatch could only hope that she carried everything she needed to do the task at hand.

"What am I looking for?" she asked as she picked up one tool that looked like a set of three-handled pliers.

"A long-range trader," Quatch replied. "Something with a clear maintenance record and cargo manifest. And an inventory for the nearby warehouses."

"A trader," Bon asked. "Why not one of the convoy escorts in the upper moorage?'

"Those have got guns, Bon. They're the first ships that the Brutes would go for."

"Fine," Lan said. "I'll be as fast as I can."

She searched the desk drawers until she found a working dataslate, then she crawled into the desk. Bon pulled up a chair and propped his legs on the desk, as if he had nothing better to do.

Quatch thought back to the argument with Nak. Of all the sailors to be on Quatch's side, it had to be Bon. Bon was like a father to his subordinate keelworkers and a close friend of the late shipmaster, but everyone else he treated with a trademark mixture of derision and scorn. He was almost universally disliked by the rest of the ship.

More than anything, Bon reminded Quatch of a carrion bird. He was shifty and opportunistic and, thanks to spending most of his life wrapped in a vacuum suit, his head was completely bald. One could almost mistake him for a woman, though nobody dared joke about that to his face.

But for all Quatch disliked Bon, he had to admit the old man was experienced, just like Nak. Both of them were senior officers. They'd started their careers years before Quatch had broken out of the egg. Quatch was at a loss as to why Shipmaster Val had promoted him to boatswain over Nak and Bon. Where they too complacent to take the promotion? Too secure in their own compartments to learn a new role?

"Something on your mind, Chief?"

"Yeah," Quatch said. He sighed to give himself precious moments to think of a lie. "Truth. Why would he throw his lot in with the Brutes? How can they possibly replace the Sangheili? Why now, when they've just found Halo?"

Bon cackled. "Don't worry about that," he said. "That nonsense is so far over our heads, it could go supernova and we wouldn't see the flash for a year."

"Yeah? Then what's all this?"

"This?" Bon said, looking around the ruined office. "Like you said, this is just the first day. It's going to get worse. Just keep your eye on the here and now."

* * *

 **Evening period, overlooking the charnel.**

Dith Oalarch was a keelworker, born and raised. He came from a long line of vacuum-suited hardasses who plied their trade on the dangerous side of the airlock. It defied all odds that multiple generations would follow each other into such a hard line of work, just as it did that each generation survived long enough to sire the next. Sudden, life-changing, life-ending injuries were a part of the job, and beyond that was the ever-present danger that stellar radiation posed to certain glands.

Accidents happened. Blood got spilled on the job. Dith was reminded of the second year of his apprenticeship, when the _Libation_ set anchor in the home system to overhaul the engine cores. It should have been a simple matter of cutting the power, popping out some hullplates, and installing parts from a kit. But as it turned out, the hullplate's orbit around Chu'ot converged slightly with the _Libation's_ orbit, and one of the other keelworkers had been too engrossed in his work to notice the hullplate inching toward him until it was too late. Rok's arm was pinned and sheared off below the elbow.

When the hullplate rebounded off the engine nacelle, Dith was the one who pulled Rok out of there and hauled him to the airlock. He still remembered the sight of arterial blood gushing from a crimped spacesuit, boiling and crystalling and then glittering in the light of Y'Deio.

Since that day, he'd seen his fellow keelworkers holed through by micrometeorites and cooked by shoddy electrical work. He'd seen enough of them die that he thought he knew what death looked like. Now he knew better.

The death he knew was bloodless carnage. In fact, it wasn't carnage at all. It was a special kind of industrial accident, where the injuries were either flash-frozen or sealed off by vacuum suits. It didn't smell, not like the bottom floor of the office smelled.

The Brutes came. They conquered. They killed. They'd dragged the bodies from all over the port and thrown them in here. Dead Sangheili and dead Yanme'e were piled on top of one another. It looked as if the Brutes had gone to the trouble of stacking the bodies like cordwood, only to give up halfway through and throw them wherever there was room.

"That was close," Taol said, startling Dith out of his horrified reverie.

"What?" he asked.

"That last one. That explosion," Taol replied. "It wasn't very far away."

Dith could hear it too, the crumps of explosions and the staccato pops of weapons fire, muffled by distance and intervening bulkheads. When the crew was skulking around outside in search of shelter, every report had played on his nerves. He'd thought that he could gather his wits when they found someplace to hide, but the gloom of the administration office only made it worse. He couldn't tell how close the fight was or how fierce the conflict, but his imagination conjured no less than five legions locked in mortal combat mere blocks away.

"How close," he asked.

"I don't know," Taol replied. "I've never fought in a station before. The sound is all turned around. It doesn't carry right."

Dith was buzzing with questions, all of which he was too afraid to ask. Taol scared him almost as much as the charnel. He was more terrified of Taol _because_ of the charnel, and how little she seemed to think of it. It churned his stomach to look down there, yet she was sitting there at the top of the stairs as if she was waiting for the bus.

But the questions tumbled out of his mouth anyway. "Why the bodies? Why stash them here? I don't understand why the hairy apes would go to the trouble of hauling the bodies from all around the port to throw them in here!"

"The bodies got to go somewhere," she replied. "In here, they're out from underfoot."

She'd found a spike pistol in the wreckage of the office, a small unit with only a triangular spoon for a bayonet. She pulled out the magazine, reinserted it, and then did something else to it that he didn't quite follow. The light was too dim to see by, and all he could hear were little mechanical clicks.

"The Brutes mean to occupy the port for a while, maybe take it for their own after the war," Taol said as she safed the gun. "They brought the dead here to keep them out of the way. Maybe the're going to burn them, like we did with the Humans sometimes. But they won't be back for a while."

She passed the spiker to Dith. "There's eleven shots in the magazine, and the safety catch is on. It better be that way when I get back."

"Get back?" he exclaimed. "Where are you going?"

She looked at him with both eyes. "I'm going to search for passkeys. Identification. Signets too. Anything we can use. After that, I might have a look around the block."

Taol trotted down the stairs and vaulted onto a stack of bodies. Dith watched with macabre fascination as she worked her way down the pile, deftly moving from one body to another, searching officers and inspectors alike with alacrity normally reserved for pickpockets. She searched bodies like a battlefield scavenger. Like a soldier who learned to do it because a few scraps of spare kit could make the difference between life and death. It made Dith sick to watch, but he couldn't look away.

Then Taol jumped down from the stack and landed on a corpse so hard that the ground rippled around her. That was when Dith realized that what he thought was a marble floor wasn't. It was a wall-to-wall puddle of blood, purple and brown flowing together but never mixing.

He didn't see much after that. The whole world collapsed and fell through to the far side of a tunnel.

When Dith stopped shaking, he realized that he'd curled into a ball under a desk. His heart was hammering in his chest, and his fright-and-flight instinct was screaming at him to pick a direction and never stop running.

Instead, he cursed the Brutes, and then he cursed the mad Hierarchs for starting the fight, and then he cursed the old shipmaster for stranding the ship on High Charity and the idiot boatswain for leading the crew here.

Dith heard a noise and searched all about him for the spiker, but by the time he found it and remembered that the safety was on, Taol was there. She cocked her head, as if wondering why Dith was hiding there. Then she saw the gun.

She had a knife. She had other things in her hands that he couldn't see, but the knife was pointed right at him.

"Put the spiker down," she rasped in a voice that brooked no argument. Dith complied immediately, and was relieved when she stowed the knife in her waistband.

"No need for us to shoot each other," Taol whispered. "There's enough hairy-assed Jirals out there willing to do the job for us."

"Lots?" Dith asked quietly.

"More than before, but they've stopped wandering around."

Dith sighed, and immediately regretted it. The miasma wafting up from below was bad enough, but now he was getting used to it. It was becoming familiar to him, and he was beginning to recognize the individual scents. He could smell burned flesh and offal and-

"Anything else?" He asked in a low voice. He didn't care what Taol found out there, he just wanted to distract himself from the wave of nausea that washed over him.

"Bodies were clean," Taol replied, digging through her bundle. "Brutes searched them good before they stashed them in here. I didn't find so much as a money purse."

She held out a snack bar, wrapped in foil. "I found food, though. You hungry?"

Dith doubled over and vomited.

"Try again, Dith," she said. "I don't think the Jirals heard you that time."

He tried to tell Taol what he thought of her and the whore that incubated her, but all that came up were dry heaves.

She stepped around the puddle of bile and dragged him deeper into the desks that formed the barricade. "Stay here. Shout if you hear anyone coming up the stairs. I'm going to report to Quatch."

* * *

 **A/N: So... there's a funny story about this chapter.**

 **I first set this chapter to paper the day after I uploaded the first chapter to . It wasn't good, so I rewrote it. That wasn't good either. All told, I rewrote the exploration of the Umtalla offices three or four times, and I was never satisfied with any iteration. Sometime in the smoky days of August, I was given a day off from work and spent the morning in a nearby park, where I wrote the scene that finally caught on and let me write this chapter. That was the very first scene above, where Quatch and Bon are climbing up into the office.**

 **It wasn't until tonight, after I'd transcribed the chapter from my notebooks into Google docs and copied it from Google Docs over to here, that I realized that the first scene was missing. I went to get the notebooks, but then I realized that I never wrote it down to begin with. That scene was typed up on my phone, in OneNote... and I'd purged my old OneNote notes a few weeks ago.**

 **The only place where that brief snippet survived was in a Discord chat with Xeno Major. For that, reason, among so many others, I am damn lucky to have him as a friend.**


	4. Windfall

_**Better a ditchdigger than a soldier be, sirrah!**_

 _ **Better to dig the graves than to lay within!**_

 _ **For princes plot and generals preen**_

 _ **until the peasants take their heads.**_

 _ **And mercenaries die in muddy fields**_

 _ **or they starve in times of peace.**_

 _ **But the ditchdigger,**_

 _ **Ah, the ditchdigger.**_

 _ **That humble ragpicker of the battlefield.**_

 _ **We ditchdiggers walk unseen!**_

 **Pauper's Refrain, Act Two of _The Ballad of If._**

* * *

 **Evening Period, Office of Harbormaster Jarl ur 'Umtalla**

"OK, look," Quatch said, scratching the map with his thumb. All the other Kig-Yar around the table craned their necks to look. "These two warehouses have everything we need. All I'm asking for is the necessities. Let's say that there's sixteen of us, and we've stolen a pair of traction sleds, and we have until the Brutes break down the door to grab what we can. What do we go for?"

"Food," Nak said. "No telling if the victuallers on a Sangheili ship can accommodate us."

"Will there be medical supplies?" Pem asked. He'd been quiet up until then, but the memory of Yann's injury, or perhaps the thought of new ones, drove him to speak.

"These are bulk supplies," Nak replied. "You're better off raiding a medical cabinet. We don't need a pallet full of bandages."

"We could trade those later. Medical supplies are as good as cash in a warzone," Bon said.

"I like the way you think," Quatch said. "I guess you could call those 'necessities'."

"Reactor coolant too," Nak suggested. The old T'vaoan rolled a thallit stick between his fingers, dreaming of the coming hour when the crew was home free and he could light up.

"No use grabbing it if we don't know what kind we need," Bon said. "Right, skipper? We don't want to carry barrels of light coolant if the ship we, ah, requisition takes the heavy iridescent stuff."

Quatch frowned. The old keelworker's informality rankled him, but he didn't like correcting Bon to call him shipmaster if he didn't have a ship to call his own yet. And he wanted to keep the crew's options open as long as he could. If he narrowed in on one ship before they even reached the docks, he knew that fates would conspire to take that ship away.

On the other hand, sitting around and waiting for life to make the decision for him was how the late Shipmaster Val got them all into this mess.

Quatch waved his hand, and Nak tossed the dataslate across the Harbormaster's desk. The dataslate slid across luminous displays, and its shadow cut through the holograms above. Quatch, fearful that the light could be spotted from outside, had asked Lan to turn the desk off, but she demurred. She said that she couldn't cut power to the desk without losing the information inside. So they'd draped a cloth banner over the largest hologram projectors inside.

And truth be told, Quatch was grateful for the light. It was a small spot of warmth in the terror and gloom of the ruined office, like a campfire in a hostile wilderness. Even if the sense of peace it gave him was an illusion, it was an illusion that helped the rest of the crew think.

So he took the dataslate and keyed from the warehouse inventories to the ship manifests, and prepared to make one executive decision after another. There were three piers, and Quatch knew that the first pier was swarming with Jirals because that was where the _Libation_ had been docked. So they would take a ship from the third pier. They wouldn't have time to fuel and prepare for a journey, so they would take a ship that was turned around and as ready to set sail as possible. That would be a ship with a recent cargo manifest. Like one of these two _Easterly_ -class tankers, or-

Quatch stopped and scrolled back, not sure if he'd just read what he'd thought he'd seen.

"Lan, is this a joke?"

The pipeliner stirred and read over his shoulder. "That's what's in the database, yes. Why?"

"Those engines. That powerplant. That's the kind of hardware you'd see in a ministry courier ship."

"They have one of those? Here?" Bon asked.

"Not the ship, just the motive parts. They're mounted in a _Timely Sirocco_ -class freighter."

"You're pulling a job on us, aren't you?" Bon exclaimed.

"See for yourself," Quatch said as he flicked the dataslate back over to him. Bon goggled at the freighter's stats and laughed. When he'd had two eyefuls, he passed it on to Nak. "Why? That has to be a joke. Two clerks were having a laugh with some spare paperwork."

"Or someone here has more money than sense," Nak said.

Quatch had never seen the inside of a courier ship, but he'd spent long nights with Nak and the rest of the _Libation's_ engine crew, and they never shut up about exotic hardware. Ministry courier ships mounted powerful engines and powerplants, all the better to get where they need to be as fast as possible. The _Timely Sirocco_ -class freighter mounted powerful engines too, but for a different reason. They were common workhorses for common jobs, better suited for hauling heaps of scrap and asteroid chunks than, say, luxury goods or passengers. Some models, Quatch knew, didn't even have internal cargo bays. They carried everything within the tow fields between their engine booms, like an oversized Spirit dropship.

"Small ship and big engines. Bet it moves like lightning," Nak said, passing the dataslate on down to Heik.

"Yeah," Heik said as he read the details. "Remember that big fight outside? I bet it could rocket right on through before anyone knows it's there. It wouldn't be a bad choice."

"We couldn't afford to keep those engines running," Quatch said.

"Sell them," Bon replied. "Break it up and sell the parts. Do you know what I can get for the reactor alone?"

"That leaves us stranded far, far from home. We're going back to Eayn."

"It's worth a fortune," Bon protested.

"And we're going to mildly regret letting that fortune slip through our fingers as we rest in our own homes. Seems like a fair trade."

"You'd never see the money," Nak interjected. "We don't know a fence in these parts. We aren't going to run into a cheeky tax dodger or some jewel-encrusted ship smuggler. We're more likely to meet some heartless bastard like the Fist, who will just kill us and take the ship."

"If only we were back in Y'deio's gravwell," Bon mused. "I know a gal who-"

"You'll have to introduce us when we get back," Quatch said, taking the dataslate from Heik. He scrolled through the list again. "There's four _Easterly_ -class freighters docked at the third pier. One of them is as good as the others. Those ships take thick heavy coolant, right?"

"They have elliptical-chamber fusion engines, yeah?" Nak asked.

"Three of them do."

"They take the heavy stuff, and they burn through it fast," Nak said. "If that's what we're-"

Three chimes rang out from the Harbormaster's desk, and everyone went quiet as the grave and still as a statue. Almost everyone. Lan stotted out of her seat and dove for cover behind another desk, and Taol backed away and leveled her pistol at the desktop.

The three chimes rang out again. Someone was trying to call the Harbormaster, Quatch realized. Stupid, he should have told Lan to cut the line to the outside. Their only hope was for the person at the other end of the line to give up and go away, and hopefully no Brutes would hear the rings.

His eyes darted from Nak to Taol to Heik to Bon and then to the other two keelworkers. None of the Kig-Yar dared to move.

There was an ascending tone and a click, and a deep, gravelly Sangheili's voice called out. "Jarl. Jarl! Answer me, damn it! Jarl!"

The silence that followed was deafening. Quatch could hear the rumble of distant battle. There was still a fight being fought between the Brutes and whoever dared to shoot back, but Quatch could imagine a thousand Brutes craning their necks toward the Harbormaster's office.

The voice continued, this time in a low growl.

"Thieves. I see you, creeping through the ruins of my brother's office like vermin searching for morsels of food. Who are you?"

That voice dripped with contempt, but it was cultured and imperious. It reminded Quatch of a dozen Sangheili officers he'd served in the Legion. They were madmen, all of them, but they could be reasoned with if you knew how. And Quatch did.

He clasped a hand to his wrist-communicator and then he pulled the banner off the desk's main holoprojector. A light-statue of a Sangheili aristocrat appeared over the desktop, richly attired in fine robes and an elaborate helmet.

The hologram was damaged, imperfect. Whole sections of the image faded in and out of focus, and the colors ran together. It was good enough for Quatch to look the Sangheili in the eyes, but he wasn't sure what he saw. Madness? Rage? Terror?

"Who are you?" the aristocrat asked again.

"I am Quatch of the Tennbau clan, acting commander of the merchant freighter _Libation._ The Brutes destroyed our ship and slaughtered most of our crew. We came here for help."

"Ku-atch," the aristocrat repeated, and Quatch wondered how good the transmission was on the aristocrat's end. "I am Kuotasim 'Umtalla, and I need no title. Where is my brother?"

"Harbormaster Jarl ur 'Umtalla is dead," Quatch replied. "The Brutes murdered him when they raided the office."

The Sangheili reeled as if that news was a physical blow. "My brother-" he roared.

"Sir, you must know that the Brutes are still outside this building! They may overhear us!"

With visible effort, the aristocrat checked himself, and continued in that low predator growl. "Those hairy _savages_. Mark my words, the Hierarchs of this age will be damned for granting them status, and our ancestors will be damned for giving them quarter all those ages ago. Better that we should have pushed them back to their cinder of a homeworld and let them starve!"

Quatch had nothing to say to that. He was feeling some of it himself.

"You came here, creeping past the Jiral's sentries," Kuotasim mused. "Are their troops massed outside? Can you move about the harbor?"

"We can," Quatch said.

"Go now," the aristocrat ordered. "Take my brother's corpse with you. Find our living kin, and pass the word unto them. I command them to leave High Charity forthwith. The Lamesai Unesh Nok abided the ages on the Holy Ring, and now it is here! It spreads through High Charity unchecked. It turns brother against brother and corrupts noble warriors to their core! They must flee this station-"

"Your kin are dead as well," Quatch said. "Most of them died fighting to give the others a chance to escape."

The aristocrat seized his helmet in a fit of rage and dashed it against the table before him. "You will go out there and find them!"

"We have found them!" Quatch snarled. "The Brutes slaughtered them, and then they threw the bodies in here to rot. There are scores of your family lying dead in the lower half of this office. The rest are nowhere to be found if they are smart. We'll get your brother home, and as many of the others as we can, but we need a starship to get away!"

Back when Quatch served in the legions, that kind of impetuous backtalk would have cost him his life. Indeed, judging from the cold fury in the aristocrat's glare, it was only the vast distance between them that kept Quatch's head on his neck.

But the way Quatch figured, he won whatever Kuotasim decided to do. If he'd angered the aristocrat enough that he cut the connection in a fit of pique, then he and the others could go back to planning in peace. But if he'd read the Sangheili right, Kuotasim was desperate to get his family away from High Charity and the rampaging Brutes, desperate enough to trade away a ship that he was going to lose to the Jirals anyway.

The Kuotasim glared at Quatch. "A starship? So that is your game."

For the longest moment, Quatch feared that the Sangheili was going to cut the call and leave the crew to hang. But then he sighed. "Very well, thief. Take my brother's body, and as many of my dead kin as you can carry. Find a brilliant star, and cast their bodies into the fire with the appropriate honors. If you do so, you may keep whichever ship you choose."

"On your word?"

"Do I have yours?"

"Yes. I swear that I will do as you commanded."

"Then you have mine as well." Kuotasim clasped his jaws, as if he had a bad taste in his mouth. "Though if what you say is true, I fear you will fail. The starships and the warehouses of the Umtalla clan are secured with veinprint locks."

The aristocrat held up his right hand. On the underside of his wrist was a circular tattoo, like an old twelve-part coin.

"The blood that flows through the veins of my adult kin is the key that opens those locks. You will need to find an Umtalla officer who still lives. Now go. There are others I must warn."

The Umtalla elder swept the table before him, and his hologram winked out, leaving only motes of light floating in its place.

There was a moment of stunned silence, and Quatch savored it.

"Did you just talk a shipping magnate out of one of his ships?" Heik asked incredulously.

Quatch pressed a single button on his vambrace, ending the recording. "I supposed I just did. And I have the record to prove it."

"Quick thinking, chief," Bon said, and under the habitual sarcasm Quatch thought he heard something genuine. "If we take a ship, it's ours to keep.

"That's gotta be the fastest anyone's ever bought a ship!" Heik said.

"Cheapest too," Nak said thoughtfully. "We're lucky he was so desperate to get his dead kin away from the Jirals."

"Wait," Heik said. "He said something about a… Lamesai Unesh Nok?"

"Sounds familiar," Quatch said. "I think that's a word in the Liturgical Tongue."

That wasn't saying much. The Liturgical Tongue was the language that the clergy of the Covenant faith spoke and sermonized with. It was overwrought and packed full of double-meanings, and Quatch understood very little of it. There were dozens of worship songs he could sing from heart, but he didn't know where one word ended and the next began.

"That must be why I never heard of it," Nak said. "Those sermons always put me to sleep."

"You aren't missing much," Bon retorted.

"Lamesai Unesh Nok," Pem said. "It's one of the names of ruination."

"What," Heik asked, "You mean the Great Enemy that the Forerunner fought?"

"Yeah," Pem replied. "It's the, uh, the decadence and infighting of a civilization that's past its prime. It also translates as 'the tide'."

"You mean like Ovun Dra'edai?" Lan asked? "The cycle of death and rebirth?"

"No, but it's an aspect of the death cycle. It's entropy that grinds down civilization. That's why the Forerunner built the Halo rings, to break the cycle of ascension and decline and transcend into godhood."

"Wasn't Halo also a weapon?" Heik asked.

Bon hissed in derision and waved his hand. "For the sake of Y'deio and all her teeming billions, are we _really_ talking religion? Here of all places? Now?"

"That's right, stay focused. Eyes and teeth, people," Quatch said over the hubbub around the desk. "We aren't out of this yet. We need to take a ship, and we'll need to take the Harbormaster with us. And I guess as many bodies as we can load into a traction sled."

The hubbub died a quick death.

"What about the locks?" Dith asked, clearly desperate to talk of anything but moving bodies. "We need to find an Umtalla the Brutes haven't killed yet."

"That's what the bodies are for," Bon said. "Veinprint locks read the shape of the blood vessels in your hand. So all we have to do is find a corpse with that tattoo, cut its arm off, and wave it under the scanner."

"That won't work," Lan said. "All the oxygen leeches out of the blood after circulation stops. It looks different to the scanner. The limb is useless moments after you cut it off."

"And you know that… how?" Nak asked incredulously.

"Doesn't matter," Dith said. He was turning an ill shade of green at the memory of what he'd seen on the lower level. "All the officers in vermillion robes have their, ah, the Jirals cut their right arms off."

"I guess nobody told that fact to the Brutes," Taol laughed.

"Enough!" Quatch said. He knew from experience that if nobody cracked the whip, this crew would sit around and jaw-jack until the universe died a cold death. "Lan, can you bypass those locks?"

"On an airlock?" she asked. She clicked her beak doubtfully. "It will take a while. I'm not sure how long."

"Then we need to get out there and find someone. Maybe if we find where the Yanme'e holed up, they can help us."

"When I was out, I saw a Sangheili whelp under armed guard," Taol said. "And the Jirals weren't breaking the warehouses open like they were earlier."

Quatch paused, weighing what he'd just heard. "You never mentioned that before."

"It didn't seem important until now."

"Very well." Quatch reviewed the documents on the dataslate one last time, committing them to memory as best he could. Maybe Lan could save some of them, but there would be no time to review them later.

"We have to move now," he said, passing the dataslate to Lan. "You grab what you can, save it for later. "Taol, you are going to steal traction sleds. We need three of them. Then you, Dith, and whoever else you choose are going to come back here and recover as many Umtalla officers as you can. Be sure to grab the Harbormaster.

"Nak, you and Pem and everyone else will take the other two sleds and go to Warehouse Twenty-Five, on Kaishen Dai street. Bon and I are going to split off and grab the Sangheili. We will meet you at the warehouse, load up, and continue on to the ship."

"Taol, you meet us there. Dock three-twenty two, and if not that then dock three-thirty one. Our objective is either _Easterly_ -class freighter _The Wealth of Szedethe 'Umtalla_ or the _Fortune of the Third Kind._ Any questions?"

"Yes," Heik said. He tapped a finger on a hololithic display on the Harbormaster's desk. "I think this thing is supposed to show activity in the spire. And there's a bunch of ships coming our way."

Quatch walked around the desk to take a look. Heik was pointing to a disk not much bigger than the palm of his hand. That disk projected a scale model of the Spire of Gifting that they were standing in. It was clearly ornamental, but it was supposed to show traffic up and down and around the spire. It was exactly the sort of thing that would appeal to a merchant prince, to see the ebb and flow of trade in real time across dozens of ports.

There was a cloud of error glyphs buzzing around the spire, as if the projector couldn't track or identify the vessels in its airspace. But it clearly showed wave after wave of carriages rising from High Charity's spine, like water rising up the trunk of a tree. Some were even homing in on the Umtalla docks, almost at the tip of the spire.

"What is it," Bon asked. "More Brutes?"

"Worse," Quatch replied. "It's competition. Let's go."

* * *

 **A/N: That's another chapter, delivered right on time for once.**

 **The next chapter is mostly written, and should land next week. But I have qualms about it. On the one hand, it establishes an upcoming character and lays the groundwork for his inclusion in the story. On the other hand, I think it breaks the flow of the story, so I might save it for later and rework it into a flashback.**

 **Speaking of characterization, how am I doing with the main cast so far? None of them have really had moments in the spotlight yet, save for Quatch and Dith, but are they coming through as distinct characters, or just names on paper?**

 **Finally, some of you might have noticed the spiffy new avatar for this story. Consider it a bit of foreshadowing for where this story is going. I would like to thank the talented The_Chronothaur over at Deviantart for drawing it, and I regret that I haven't shown it sooner. I wanted to wait until about chapter seven or so before I revealed it, but he completed it faster than I expected, and I took a long hiatus after posting the first chapter.**


	5. Legend

_**"If the Jirals and the four-jaws despise each other, it's because each sees too much of themselves in the other."**_

 **-Common Jackal proverb, provenance unknown.**

* * *

 **Evening Period, Office of Harbormaster Jarl ur 'Umtalla**

Heik was surprised to learn that Lan swore like his grandmother.

He shouldn't have been surprised. Lan sometimes slipped into an old-fashioned manner of speech, courtesy of having grown up on an isolated religious commune in a backwater star system somewhere in the Long March. She'd grown up with books and entertainment over a century old, and her habitat hosted visitors from the world outside maybe once a year.

No, what surprised him was that he was hearing her swear at all. Lan never spoke when she worked. Never. When you spoke to her, she had to stop working and gather her thoughts before she could hold up her end of the conversation. And she only talked about her work in the most general of terms, which was just as well, because nobody understood what she did anyway.

And here she was, hunched over a dataslate, muttering that some kind of data terminal was designed by a blue-feathered idiot who couldn't tell his hands from his feet.

"Lan, are you alright?"

She jumped in fright, and flipped the dataslate facedown on the desk. When she saw Heik standing off to her side, she relaxed and her mane of feathers flattened against her skull in embarrassment.

"Fine, all fine," se said, resting her hands over the dataslate. "Quatch asked me to pull documents from the server, but they won't stay in the cache.

Heik walked around the Harbormaster's desk and sat down beside her. "That's it?"

"It's a nuisance, maybe worse. We might need these documents and-" she chattered her teeth. "We'll have to do without. Nothing for it."

"Why not print the documents out?" Heik asked. "There's got to be a scribe somewhere in this office."

She blinked at him, dumbfounded.

"There's paper documents lying around in here," Heik said. "The Umtalla didn't do everything on computer. So there has to be a scribe or a printer-"

Lan flipped the dataslate upright and tapped furiously with her claws. "That won't be so easy. Networks like that tend to be shaped oddly. But there's no harm trying."

That wasn't it. He had once seen her spend days hunting down a glitch in the Libation's comm mast, with the senior radioman breathing down her neck. She hadn't been nearly so close to breaking then. Heik couldn't connect the stoic, unflappable pipeliner he'd seen then with the woman he saw now.

So he bid her good luck, stood, and turned to leave. But no further he'd gone than a few steps when Lan blurted out "I don't like leaving people behind."

Heik glanced over his shoulder. She was hunched over, her mane fluttering nervously.

"The boatswain made that deal with the aristocrat to rescue dead Sangheili that we've never met before. And that's a good thing to do, but what about our family? What about all the crew who died on the dock with the Libation?"

Heik was surprised to hear her call the crew family.

"We're abandoning them," she declared. "We're leaving them to rot on the battlefield, and they don't deserve that. They deserve to go home to their families, or be brought home for a funeral. And we can't give them that."

"Lan, we can't go back. There's a whole army of Brutes camped out on that pier."

"I know that. I know we can't go back. But I don't like it. It's just…"

"Just?" Heik asked when she said no more.

She took a while to reply, and it looked like she changed her mind a few times about whether to say anything.

"I had to do things to the server to make it talk, things I am not allowed to do. As soon as someone recovers this server, they are going to see exactly what I did, and we're tied to the server because of the deal Quatch made. It could come back to bite us."

"It can't be that serious," Heik said. "You didn't do anything that will get you the death penalty."

She stared at him, and didn't say a word.

"But there's a war being waged out there! After all that fighting, nobody is going to notice…" Heik trailed off. There would be people interested in the server, a whole clan of them. And Lan was right. Quatch's recording of his deal with the Umtalla elder put the crew in the vicinity of the server at the time of the crime.

She didn't speak, nor did she look away.

Lan was a pipeliner. She fixed all the computers and the instrumentation devices aboard the Libation, and each day she walked a fine line between dutiful repairs and heretical alterations.

Heik was an apprentice signalman. He knew the theory of luminal and superluminal communications, and he could tune the comm mast just as well as a journeyman could, but he didn't understand the technology itself. He didn't understand the laws that governed technological innovation, and barely understood the dogma that gave rise to those laws. Machines were forbidden to talk to each other, but networks were built all the time. What could she have done that could possibly be so wrong?

He didn't know, and he wasn't going to ask. The less he knew, the less he could give away.

"Can you cover your tracks?"

"I don't have time," she said. "I want to burn the servers to the ground, but I can't. There's information in them that we will need to access from the ship."

"You can't print it out?"

She clicked her beak in the negative. "If I printed out astrogation data, we'd be here all day."

"Is everything alright?" Quatch asked as he walked up. He'd taken the longarm spiker from Pem, and he had it slung over one shoulder. "Lan, how are those registries coming?"

"I'll have them soon, or not at all."

"Mmm," Quatch said. "How about you, Heik? You overhear anything on the Agora?"

"Nothing," Heik said. "The Ministries locked all the public channels down 'to stem the tide of heresy and sedition'. There's a lot of military traffic, but it's all encrypted."

"Sounds about right," Quatch said. "Lan, finish up and get ready to move. Heik, you're coming with me. If we're lucky, the Jirals and the four-jaws will be too busy killing each other to notice us slipping by."

* * *

 **Morning Period, Near the Nape of High Charity's Unbreakable Spine**

Captain-Major Alcyonius Aristróchyr Magni had never felt so alive.

It was the first day of the Jiralhanae's elevation, and the fighting had been glorious. His troops had met the Sangheili and driven them to rout. It was just as Tartarus had promised. The Sangheili legions who stood guard on High Charity were parade regiments, warriors who had won glory years before and rested on their laurels thereafter.

Alcyonius's troops advanced block by block through streets that were ancient before his people ever left Dosiac's gravity well. He guided them from the back of a troop carrier so fresh from the Assembly Forges that it still smelled of hot metal and divinity. And as he saw the Sangheili fall back into retreat, he knew this was the day. The final culmination of a thousand years of bloodshed and toil, when his people would take their rightful place in the galaxy. And he was glad to be here.

He stood atop that troop carrier, just behind the twin light gun turrets, and he beheld the last redoubt of the Swords of the Third Sun. That legion had holed up in a temple that lay at the intersection of five roads. The road before him was littered with barricades and burning vehicles.

"Captain-Major!" one of his warriors shouted from the street below. "What is your command? Shall we take the fight to them?"

He inhaled deeply, savoring the smell of the besieged city. "They are dug in so deeply, and that temple is not one of our necessary objectives. I am tempted to level it with artillery or bypass it altogether."

The silence within and without the troop carrier was deafening. Alcyonius held their gazes for a few moments before he grinned, reached down and pulled a Brute shot off the gun rack.

"But I think I'd rather take it myself!"

The warriors roared, and even the Unggoy joined in.

"Sally forth and take that temple! You will show no fear and give no quarter! They shall not live to see the might and majesty of the Holy Ring!"

They roared louder. The troop carrier whined into high gear and surged forth, and they raced to keep pace. Alcyonius dropped into the troop bay and barked out more orders.

"Leleb, tell Jhetus his men are to advance along the rooftops and draw fire until we breach the perimeter. Dharyus and Baramus are to advance up the First and Fourth avenues, and be prepared to pursue should the heretics flee."

The Unggoy squeaked an affirmative and began relaying his commander's words into the headset integrated into his gas mask. Comm gear hung off his rebreather like saddlebags on a pack animal.

"The rest of your lot," Alcyonius spoke to the warriors lined up each side of the bay. "Follow me. Stay close. Don't lose your heads. We will charge straight to the temple and fight our way inside."

"And you," he said to his lieutenant. Captain Beringus, old leather-hided Beringus, who had served under Alcyonius since that first skirmish against the enemy on a sandy Human borderworld. "Witness me."

The muffled sounds of battle clashed with the booming thump-thump-thump of the troop carrier's light guns and the whine of the engine. There was no way to tell how the battle was going, not with the hatch closed. Impacts rattled the frame, which was nothing compared to when the carrier plowed into a barricade and overran it. The whole troop bay rolled to one side and then the other as a scraping sound ran down the length of the vehicle.

Alcyonius checked his weapon. He pushed the dust cover forward and ran a finger down the polished breech of the Brute shot. It, like the troop carrier, was newly manufactured by the Assembly Forges. It was a new machine, made of sacred alloys and heavy metals, rather than the crude construction he had known in the early years of his career. The gun was sturdy, the blade had an edge that wouldn't dull, and the design was blessed by the San'Shyuum themselves. With this weapon in hand, he would fight the gods.

Suddenly the troop carrier yawed to the side. Someone hit the release and the rear hatch slammed down and everyone spilled out.

He hit the ground with a clank of armored plate and surveyed the battlefield again. The temple lay at the center of a courtyard encircled by the five avenues, and that courtyard was filled with crates, pavises, and overturned civilian vehicles, all arranged to form interlocking lines of cover for the heretics. Cover that his own men could use.

Roadblocks had been set up on the streets to prevent vehicles from entering the intersection, and more roadblocks had been erected to prevent any vehicles that entered from circumnavigating the temple. But they were inadequate. They would have stopped civilian vehicles and Ghosts, maybe even inconvenienced a Wraith, but his troop carriers were designed to cross harsher terrain.

It was a mediocre defensive position, inadequately prepared.

Already his troops were encircling the courtyard and pushing through the perimeter. They were harried by plasma fire from the defenders, but Jhetus's jump-raider rained down spikes and grenades from above, and the troop carriers blasted turrets and cover to splinters with their light guns.

Why had the Swords holed up here? Was it for a lack of choice, or some sentimental attachment to this particular temple? Or did they hope he wouldn't dare attack such a holy place? If so, they were mistaken. They had defiled the place with their heretic feet already, and there was nothing worse that Alcyonius could do.

"On me!" he cried, raising his Brute shot overhead.

Alcyonius charged, and his men took up the battlecry as they followed. In the name of faith, they would shed blood. For the sake of the Heirarchs who still lived, they fought. For the fate of the hundreds of billions who stayed true to the faith, they would lay down their lives.

He charged around one line of barricades, then another. Each time he fired off a single round to catch anyone lying in ambush with enfilading fire.

The third time, there was an entire lance waiting for him. Four Unggoy peppered the air around him with panicked shots from their plasma pistols, while their Sangheili leader fired a plasma rifle in his good hand and fumbled with a grenade in his off hand.

Alcyonius fired twice.

His weapon was loaded, not with grenades, but shotshells.

The Unggoy were torn to ribbons. The four-jaw's shields flared like a struck match with the first hit, and were blown out by the second. He staggered. Fingers slick with blood slipped over the grenade in search of the primer.

Alcyonius never broke his stride. Still at a dead run, he swung the Brute shot and drove the blade through the Sangheili's neck.

The grenade fell to the ground, unarmed.

This was better than any sparring match. This was real. Flesh against flesh, might against might, nothing held back.

But he was not so caught up in the heat of the moment that he lost his bearings. He caught his breath as his men caught up to his mad dash, and he overheard a Sangheili rallying his troops over the next line of barricades.

The Captain-Major pulled a spike grenade from his belt, primed it, and threw it over the line of crates. Some of his men followed suit. The ground rumbled beneath their feet, and turf rained down upon them. All together, the pack vaulted over the top.

They were greeted by a torrent of plasma fire. A Sangheili, wounded but not dead, had dragged a plasma cannon from its broken tripod and lain in wait.

Pethainneus, the youngest and eagerest of the pack, was the first over the top, and therefore drew the heretic's fire. The torrent tore through his armor and dropped him before he could stand.

The pack's answering salvo slew the Sangheili, but not before he swiped his line of fire across the pack. Bolts of hot matter splashed off armor or burned flesh. Alcyonius felt a shot bite into his left shoulder, his good shoulder, and it threw off his aim and wasted his last shot. The Brute shot's action sprang open, empty.

No matter. His warriors shot true. The fingerlip was dead three times over, and his weapon was a smoking ruin. Alcyonius dropped another belt of shotshells into the action of his weapon and then examined his wound. His armor had taken the brunt of the hit, but a tendril had splashed off and cut into flesh, maybe into the muscle underneath. There was a small V of blackened skin surrounded by singed hair and surrounding a wound that wept blood.

He pulled a clot-cloth from his belt and pressed it to the wound. The fabric knitted to his skin, and the pain subsided almost immediately.

"Pethainneus is down!" Major Beringus shouted before his commander could ask.

"Dead?" Alcyonius shouted.

"Yes! Or very close!"

"Leave him," Alcyonius ordered. "We will come back for his body. Follow me, and prepare to sing his honors when we ascend!"

He hefted the Brute shot and ran. Not directly for the temple, but clockwise around it. They were deep enough in enemy lines that any reasonable defender would be forming up and enveloping his pack. Better to not advance than to be flanked or struck from behind.

To his surprise, the very first defender he encountered was an unarmed and underarmored Sangheili, crouched at the end of a line of crates with his hands clasped over his head. A citizen, not a warrior, either pressed into service or volunteered for a fight he couldn't fathom.

Alcyonius kicked the wretch out of his way. He didn't see what his warriors did as they passed by, and he didn't much care. The men had to have their sport.

They advanced slower now, some laying down fire as the rest maneuvered or reloaded. The Captain-Major killed none in this stretch of the battle, but his men acquitted themselves well. The heretics, in turn, moved slower. Their numbers were thinned by the relentless siege, and many of them were walking wounded. Two more lances fell before the pack before Alcyonius ordered them to turn and march on the front entrance.

He was prompted by the sight of jump-raiders leaping across the courtyard to the battlements above. They were breaking into the temple, and Alcyonius would be damned if he let an upstart like Major Jhetus beat him to the triumph.

The Brute packs converged upon the entrance from all directions, but Alcyonius was in the lead.

The steps leading up those doors were slick with blood, and bristled with shield pavises and cover improvised from civilian vehicles. The defenders were the last of the best, Sangheili with a few white-armored Unggoy Ultras. They fought as one, with valor sourced from the desperation of the cornered. At the top of the steps, Alcyonius saw the glint of golden armor as a Fieldmaster dashed from one column to the next.

Those stairs would be a hard spot to storm. Alcyonius wished he had a hammer or a war ax, but all he had were his guns and the handax dangling from his belt. The troop carriers could not assist. One was a smoking ruin, the others had circled around back to cut off the fleeing apostates. And the jump-raiders had, ever so predictably, shifted their attention elsewhere.

The Captain-Major was content to stay put and trade gunfire with the defenders for only so long. Jhetus's advance and his own dwindling ammunition supply weighed heavily on his mind. When he saw a break in the Sangheili coordination, he cried for a volley of grenades and charged oncemore.

The defenders answered his volley with one of their own, but by then he was already on the move. Grenades detonated before and behind him. Shards of metal and waves of hot concussive force tested his armor and found it true.

Alcyonius took the steps three at a time, rounded the wreckage of a motor carriage and fired twice. Two Sangheili fell over dead.

Another barricade, another shot, this time wasted on a dead Unggoy.

A red-armored Sangheili Major sprang out from cover, a plasma rifle in each hand, and he got off two quick bursts before Alcyonius and his men cut him down. The Jiralhanae warrior hurt, but he wasn't sure how bad. And he didn't care. He felt more alive than ever, and the beginnings of a blood rage stirred his mind.

He was lost in combat-euphoria. He barely noticed the hail of spikes and plasma bolts hammering down on the stairs. Sangheili died from the crossfire, and Alcyonius only noticed his weapon had run dry when he pulled the trigger three times and nothing happened.

No time to reload. He drew a spike rifle from its holster, a custom job with a disabled rate reducer. It was a beast to control and it voided its magazine in heartbeats, but Alcyonius didn't miss. Not at this range. Not usually. But he was still euphoric, and his shots stitched up a blue-armored heretic's torso and went wild. He corrected and the last quarter of the clip went true, but by that time the four-jaw was probably dead enough.

He advanced, flailing wildly with the spike rifle. The stairs narrowed near the top, and there was nowhere a heretic could stand out of Alcyonius's reach as he rushed up those last steps.

One of the last Sangheili defenders died messily as Alcyonius circled about him and went to work with the bayonets. Shields, already weakened from battle, collapsed under the assault. The warrior within didn't last much longer.

Another Sangheili tackled Alcyonius from behind, throwing him off-balance. He tried to draw a knife blade across Alcyonius's throat, but he was weak and sluggish from his injuries, and Alcyonius had yet to feel his. He threw a wild block with his free arm and battered the Sangheili with the other.

The Sangheili snaked his arm around the block and went for Alcyonius's throat again, but the Captain-Major had already spun and thrown himself against a pillar. The Sangheili was caught between.

Alcyonius rammed the pillar again and again until he felt the heretic's grip weaken, and then he pulled the four-jaw off his back and threw him to the ground.

The blue-armored Sangheili warrior staggered to his feet, wheezing as if it hurt to breathe. Before he could stand, Alcyonius seized him by the cuff of his armor and threw him down the stairs. He landed half a dozen steps below and rolled to a stop against a barricade.

And that was it. Alcyonius stood at the double-doors, when his pack was only halfway up the steps. The heretics lay dead or dying. The bloodrage and its euphoria were fading away, and in their place was the ache of his injuries and a pride that shone like a newborn star. Dozens of his warriors stood in the courtyard below, and all their eyes were upon him.

Unprompted, they began to chant his name. First a handful, and then the whole courtyard sang out "Alcyonius, servant of Tartarus! Alcyonius! Aristróchyr! Magni!"

He raised his Brute shot overhead, still dripping with Sangheili blood, and shouted in triumph.

"Alcyonius, Keenest of the Left-Handed," Major Beringus pronounced as he surmounted the steps. Those were the true words behind Alcyonius's three names, and it was gratifying when he could hear them spoken with awe. "We'll have to add 'He Who Wades In Blood" by the end of the day."

Alcyonius laughed, and pulled out his last belt of shot-shells. "Come, let us finish the job. I can't wait to see the look on Jhetus's face when he learns all that's left for him to do is to carry away the bodies."

The pack formed up, and the double-doors swung inward, and as they did so the Captain-Major realized that he had never seen the golden-armored Fieldmaster fall. And there, standing in the dark recesses of the entrance was the Fieldmaster himself, plasma rifle at the ready.

One of the Jiralhanae, a minor named Kravgazus, gave a cry of alarm and raised his gun. Alcyonius was very nearly spooked, but he snarled at the young warrior to stay silent. He knew that the Sangheili wanted this moment. The bastard should have fought and died with his men, but he'd hidden so he could face the Jiralhanae alone, or perhaps he'd had a momentary lapse of courage.

"I am Desan 'Atmahatyee. I was the Fieldmaster of the Swords of the Third Sun, and I am the last of their number," the Sangheili announced as threw his rifle away and drew a sword. "I trained these warriors. I led them to victory. And for the whims of a mad Hierarch, I have seen their lives wasted. I loved them as brothers, and I will kill you for wasting their blood."

He ignited the sword with a flourish, and the hallway was bathed in brilliant white-blue light.

Alcyonius smiled and cast the belt of shotshells aside. His pack cheered as he stepped forward, Brute shot held in the ready position.

"I am Captain-Major Alcyonius. From Moesia I've come, and into oblivion I'll cast your broken body. I've slain no warriors today, only gutless has-beens!"

Beringus, bless him, beat his gun against his chest armor. Slowly. The rest of the pack took up the beat. They drummed metal against metal, foot against stone.

The Fieldmaster gave up ground, falling back into the hallway. Alcyonius advanced. His pack followed, still drumming. Someone chanted his name in a low voice and it echoed down the dark hall. "Alcyonius. Aristróchyr. Magni. Alcyonius. Aristróchyr. Magni."

The hall was lined with graven images of martyrs and victories. Statues of Sangheili generals stood guard, either mannequins that wore the armor of a saint or stone statues carved in lifelike detail, the latter of which held their helmets over their foreheart.

Desan 'Atmahatyee continued his slow retreat. His sword cast his shadow on the wall, larger than life. That shadow fell across paintings of San'Shyuum who had died to bring the truth to the unbelievers. Other paintings showed San'Shyuum brokering peace between warring colonies and Yanme'e Queens who mobilized their hives to save the faithful from great disasters.

All the while, the pack never stopped their drumbeat. The tempo only got louder and faster. By the time they reached the worship chamber, a circular room beneath an iron image of the Sacred Halo, the noise was a physical presence. It was as fast as the beating of Alcyonius's heart, and as loud as the blood rushing in his ears. His injuries vanished in the gathering blood-rage.

At long last, the Sangheili lunged, sword outstretched and aimed for the Captain-Major's heart. Alcyonius swung his weapon in turn. Gun intercepted sword. Plasma burned through metal. The blade emerged, but by the time it did, Alcyonius deflected the Fieldmaster's arm enough that the blade missed him by the span of a hand.

Desan reversed the swing, and very nearly cut the Brute shot in two, but Alcyonius had let go of the weapon. He seized the Sangheili's wrist with his right hand and locked it in an iron grip.

The Fieldmaster jabbed Alcyonius in the crook of the arm with his free hand and drove a hoof into his shin. The Jiralhanae's grip was very nearly broken. But by now he'd dropped the useless gun and pulled the handax from his belt. He raised it overhead and brought it down in a swing that chopped through shield, armor, flesh and bit into bone.

The second swing cleaved right through.

The drumbeat was gone. The pack had been shocked into silence. The Fieldmaster staggered backward. Without a word, he stared at his severed stump of an arm and the lifeblood that poured forth. It was a mortal wound, and all he had to do was lay down and let fate take him away.

Instead, Desan 'Atmahatyee sluggishly drew another sword and ignited it with a slower flourish. This one was shorter, with only a single blade.

Alcyonius grinned from ear to ear.

It was over quickly.

The Sangheili asked for no mercy, and the Captain-Major gave him none.

* * *

 **Morning Period, Temple of Hope and Vindication**

Alcyonius shed one armor plate after another and tossed them aside as he walked out of the temple. They were useless, blackened and frayed from having deflected so many shots.

When he was done, he sat on the steps where he had become legend and basked in the glory of violence done well. There would be other fights and other victories in the day ahead, each with their own challenges, but none so great as this. His tale would be told for generations to come. The scores that his Brute Shot left in the tile floors would be preserved for ages. So too would the burns where he'd cast the Fieldmaster's sword aside.

He was a legend. He was immortal. What else was there to live for?

Violence. That was what. Raw, naked violence and the heat of combat. To take part in the purest test of physical prowess and emerge the victor. To pit strength against strength, and to hear the siren song of the bloodrage in his ears. It was sweeter than any instrument, and more seductive than any lover he'd known.

But for now, there was peace. And Alcyonius knew it would only last until he learned what his officers had gotten up to while he was preoccupied. He could see Leleb scampering over the battlefield to bring him the bad news.

"I see you, Captain-Major," Beringus said as he walked up from behind. "This victory has swollen your pride so much that you can no longer bear its weight."

"I have become legend, Beringus. I have become immortal in the minds of men. Keep your mouth in check, and I shall be sure to mention your name when they take my account for posterity."

"A short-lived legend you'll be," Beringus laughed, gesturing to the bulkhead-sky that covered the whole length of the Unbreakable Spine. "The shortest-lived legend of them all! Remember that the Holy Ring has been discovered, and our ascension is close at hand!"

He'd forgotten that, and he felt a keen loss at that realization. There would be no new generations to carry his name forward, and no festivals held in his memory. Godhood felt like a pale replacement of that kind of immortality. What did enlightened gods do but think at one another?

"'Beringus, yes, I knew that wretch,' I'll tell them," Alcyonius said. "'A toothless warrior without a wit to his name, and as ugly as a Kig-Yar's scalp. I should have left him to rot in the dunes of Njarro!'"

The Major laughed until he saw Leleb climbing the stairs. So did Alcyonius.

Leleb was his adjutant. He'd trusted Leleb with an honor he couldn't trust to his own kind, and it was a position that Leleb had earned. And yet, through no fault of his own, Alcyonius was growing to hate the little Unggoy. It seemed like Leleb only ever brought bad news.

"Captain-Major!" Leleb cried, hopping between puddles of blood as he climbed the stairs. "Captain Pheteristus sends word! He has pushed the Sangheili heretics into the market district! He claims they are breaking before him, but he needs reinforcements!"

Alcyonius closed his eyes and inhaled deeply. He heard Beringus back away as if in fear for his safety, but that was just another of his jokes. He knew that his commander didn't lose his temper so easily, and besides, it was hard to work up a rage so soon after the last one.

"Pheteristus was given very explicit orders, was he not? I told him, in short and direct words, to secure the terrace habitat."

"Yes sir," Leleb said. "But he claims that he saw an opportunity."

"An opportunity that drew him across a residential district?" Alcyonius snarled. "No, this is a transparent attempt to lead me around by the chain. Either I send those reinforcements and he claims the glory for himself, or I don't, and he claims my timidity cost us a sure victory. I will not play that game. You tell him to turn around and crawl back to our lines, or I am through with him. He is supposed to be supporting Captain Lanthasmus. That is an order!"

"I will, Captain-Major," Leleb replied. "But I must note that Lanthasmus himself is wandering out of position."

Alcyonius turned to Beringus. "Do you remember the good old days, when warriors knew to follow orders?"

Beringus clasped his hands behind his head. "That was back when we were Minors without a lance of Unggoy to our name. Those were good years."

It was an old argument between them. Major Beringus felt that the glory-seeking and the constant search for promotion by killing one's superiors had always been a fact of life, but Alcyionius thought better. Something had changed when Tartarus had come to power and built his coalition. Now even the barely-trained farmboys who were still picking shit from between their toes gave Aclyonius trouble. This new breed lacked respect for order and for tradition, except when it suited them.

Alcyonius blamed Tartarus personally, but he knew better than to say so out loud. Those were seditious words not worth his life.

"Leleb, recall one of the troop carriers. I must settle this personally."

"Sir!" Leleb barked in acknowledgement, but then he cocked his head, as if listening to his headset. "Captain-Major, you have a priority message from the Chieftain!"

The Unggoy produced a dataslate and pressed his palm to it for authentication.

"He's passing on orders direct from the Warmaster! He's-" Leleb lost his words, and his eyes bulged behind his goggles.

"Captain-Major, he… Warmaster Anotatus is ordering us to…"

Alcyonius took the dataslate from Leleb and read it. Then he read it again, to make sure his eyes weren't deceiving him.

"Cease-fire?!"

* * *

 _Historical note: Many of the details in this account will seem strange to modern readers. How could the cream of the Sangheili Legions fight so poorly that the Jiralhanae cut through them with such lopsided casualties? How could a Fieldmaster abandon his men in their final moments to set the scene for his last stand? Surely this tale is nothing but propaganda._

 _This story is drawn from three accounts. The first is the testimony of Alcyonius himself, which he told many times in the aftermath of the Great Schism. The second is an after-action report of uncertain authorship submitted to Warmaster Anotatus and preserved in the records of the light carrier_ Circumstance of Loyalty.

 _The third is the testimony of Leleb the Scribe, who served under Alcyonius. It should be noted that Leleb later recanted his testimony, but only after he learned that Alcyonius had not fallen in the fight against the Flood, but rather abandoned his troops and deserted. Leleb's updated account is so transparently spiteful and contrived that we can dismiss it out of hand. Alcyonius, after all, was not the kind of warrior to sit out the fight in the safety of a troop carrier, and he was most certainly not crippled from a chronic bowel disease._

 _Although the lopsided casualties Alcyonius's legion inflicted on the Swords of the Third Sun seem improbable, they are far from unique. The conclusion we must reach is that Jiralhanae propaganda contained a kernel of truth: The Sangheili Legions stationed on High Charity were indeed out of practice and too caught up in parade ground rivalries to effectively coordinate. They were matched against Jiralhanae legions fresh from the battlefield, coordinated by the greatest military mind of an age._

 _Many lament that if Truth had not cast the Sangheili aside and instated the Jiralhanae, the forces stationed on High Charity would have contained the Flood. It is claimed that only the distraction of fighting the Jiralhanae prevented those forces from acting in time. This is a fantasy. The Jiralhanae were the better soldiers, and High Charity was doomed the moment that the UNSC In Amber Clad slipspace-tunneled into the dome._

* * *

 **A/N: This is two days late. What was going to be chapter five has been moved to chapter six, and will be posted this weekend if I get it finished in time. This could have been a chapter full of people yakking at each other, but I wasn't satisfied with it as an introduction for Alcyonius, and I wanted to blow something up. So I sat down on Sunday morning and started writing. And as it turns out, American football is a great thing to play in the background while writing Brute combat scenes.**

 **See you guys next week!**


	6. Best Laid Plans

_"_ _The generalissimo scouts, and the generalissimo plots,  
But she may as well play with dice."_

Popular proverb of Kig-Yar mercenaries, derived from _The Ballad of If_

* * *

 **Evening Period, Office of Harbormaster Jarl ur 'Umtalla**

Quatch walked into the conference room where the rest of the crew was hiding. Six sailors stared back at him, gathered around a platter of meat. Tair and Dwe looked up in fright, Cam, Sap and Kess had the blank looks of the condemned, and Don actually looked hopeful.

"We..." Quatch said, not sure where to start.

To tell the truth, he'd only come in here to get Kess to round out Taol's lance. But Nak had just pestered him and asked if that was all he was going to do, and suddenly he knew what the old engine chief was hinting at. These people weren't soldiers. He couldn't just order them to stay put. If he was going to leave them for any amount of time, they needed a reason why.

"I've bought a ship. We'll be out of here by the end of the day."

They all perked up at that news.

"How?" Dwe blurted. "And with what money?"

"I made a deal with one of the Umtalla clan leaders. There will be time for details later. Right now, you need to get ready to move."

They were already getting to their feet.

"I'm not done yet. Bon and Heik are coming with me to rescue a prisoner. He's held down the street. We'll be quick. Taol is-"

Small prophecies, Taol herself walked through the door. She'd evidently just got done raiding the kitchen. She was carefully stuffing knives into her vest, and she had a trio of musette bags slung over one shoulder.

"Taol is… What are the bags for?"

"Camouflage," she replied. Quatch wondered if he would be happier not knowing.

"Right. Taol is taking a group to steal some transportation. When successful, she and the others will return to pick you up. Then Nak will continue on to a warehouse where we'll requisition everything we need for the journey."

"Just Nak?" Tau asked.

"No, Nak and Pem and their group. Kess too, I need you to drive a sled. Taol and Dith and whoever she chooses are going to stay here and load bodies."

There was a moment of stunned silence, and then everyone was asking questions. Quatch ignored them and spoke over them.

"That was the deal I reached with the clan elder. The Brutes slew his kin and threw them in here to rot. Taol and her crew are going to retrieve them and meet us at the docks. Taol?"

"Sap and Don," she said, choosing her fellow cargo handler and the janitor. "And it would be a help if you to would go down there right now and move the bodies over to the front door."

"How many bodies?" Sap asked.

"As many will fit in the back of one of those cargo sleds. You want the ones wearing green robes. If in doubt, look for a family tattoo on the right wrist, if the forearm hasn't been cut off. And don't forget Yann."

They all stared at him in bewilderment, and Quatch wasn't sure if his briefing hadn't done more harm than good. So he said "Keep it together, do what I say, and we'll get out of here safely. I promise."

Then he left the conference room.

* * *

 **Midday, Upper Moorage of the Umtalla Dockyards**

"You'll do."

Those words rang through P'thon's head as the Jiral carried him to the _Dying Vow of Rhi 'Umtalla_ , forced his arm out, and submitted his wrist to the scanner. Light played about the tattoo on his wrist as the scanner peered into the blood vessels underneath.

P'thon wished he could die, but he couldn't, no more than he could stop the blood that flowed through his hearts. The veinprint lock identified him as a member of the Umtalla family in good standing, and airlock unlocked and parted to admit him.

The Jirals cheered, and the silver-furred one dropped him and stormed inside. Two others rushed after him with their wicked bladed guns at the ready. The last one tended to P'thon's injury, extracting the spikes from his leg and suturing the wounds shut. P'thon was too weak from blood loss and pain to fight back.

When the Brute was done, he threw P'thon over his shoulder and carried him to the bridge.

The _Dying Vow of Rhi 'Umtalla_ was a ship central to the family history. It had been gifted to the Umtalla clan when they joined the Restorationist faction of the Winnowing Wars. With it, they had turned the tide of the convoy battles. When it was helmed by the likes of Kuorathon or Rael 'Umtalla, it had broken blockades and put an end to pirate kings. To captain this ship in battle and add to its legend would have been the crowning moment of P'thon's career, an honor the clan elders would have granted him only after he proved his worth.

He was helpless to resist as they brought him to the shipmaster's post and used his veinprint to start the engines.

Then the Brutes took him outside to the other convoy escort, the _Song of Starfire_ , and again used him to unlock the door and kindle the reactor.

They threw him in the back of a troop carrier and paraded him around the harbor. Again and again, he was forced to unlock the ships of the Umtalla fleet so that jeering savages could take their helm. He lost count of how many. He was too lost in pain and shameful fear for his own safety.

In one dock after another, he saw the severed forearms of his kin, each bearing the family crest. The Brutes must have butchered the dead like animals before a feast. And after they used him to open every Umtalla ship present, what would they do with him?

But that final moment never came.

After he'd been taken all along the third and second pier, they handed him over to another Jiralhanae, a wounded Minor with minimal armor and a chest covered in blood-matted hair. He carried himself like it hurt to breathe. P'thon didn't understand the language that the Jirals used to speak to one another, but he saw the contempt that all the other Jiralhanae held this one in. They were telling this new guard that his next failure would be his last.

By then, much of P'thon's strength had returned, and he began to entertain the possibility of escape. His legs were bound with cords, but he was sure that he could slip those off, and the Jiral couldn't watch him at all times. He could flee and he would hide, or he would die trying.

Then the Jiral motioned to the crowd, and a pair of Kig-Yar joined him, and P'thon realized that he would not even get that far. One was named Yin, the other was named Tur. Both were women, and both had the sharp-eyed look of seasoned warriors.

The Jiral took him to the warehouse district, where he was forced to open one warehouse after another. The Brute organizing the plunder of the Umtalla warehouses was more deliberate and methodical than the ones at the docks, and he only ever had three warehouses opened at a time. As the day passed P'thon watched a steady stream of sleds and trailers carry away the family wealth.

Evening arrived, and it found P'thon in the meal court. It was a shallow bowl filled with benches and tables for the Sangheili workers and roosts for the Yanme'e laborers, all of which radiated out from a stage.

Every morning, a deacon would take that stage and bless the hot food that was carried from the kitchens, and then he would minister to the worker's souls. P'thon had worked in the warehouses when he was younger, and he had taken many meals here. He had listened with rapt attention as Mimin wove a narrative from scriptures and the history of the Umtalla clan and the ancestry of the Kamkh-aha hive.

From the examples of those who had gone before, he had learned how to conduct himself as a male, how to stay true to his word, and how to uphold the honor of the clan without utterly denying himself. He had learned almost as much from that little Unggoy as he had from the lessons his uncles had given him.

Now as he lay here at the foot of the stage, P'thon thought back to those examples, and wondered what Mimin would have him do. He thought of those great ancestors, from the recent to those where were nearly passed into myth, and was at a loss for what they would have done if they were captured by a savage enemy.

He thought of Kuhostoum, the master negotiator who had once ransomed himself from pirates on credit. He thought of Bai'ghir 'Umtallahee, who broke out of a holding cell on a slaver corvette and captured the ship nearly singlehandedly. And he remembered the legend of Gosuim 'Umtalla, who had negotiated safe conduct for himself and hundreds of civilians, even as they were trapped behind enemy lines for years. Would they be ashamed of him for his failures, or would they pity him for being thrown into war without the training or the tools to survive.

He was roused from his self-pity by the return of one of the Kig-Yar soldiers, Yin. She trotted up on the stage with a cloth bundle of something under one arm and a portable cookstove under the other. After she set up the cookstove and turned it on, she unfurled the cloth bundle to reveal one of the severed arms.

"Hey, kid. You hungry?" she asked with a cackle.

"Don't be disgusting!" Tur snapped back.

"What? Meat is meat."

"But cannibalism is something else! Give me that!" Tur scrambled up on the stage and snatched the arm away. Yin snarled and brought the knife up.

"Shut. Up," the Jiralhanae growled as he rocked to his feet. Hunched over as he was, he still towered over the two Kig-Yar. And even though the best he could manage was a low rumble, the two birds immediately quit fighting.

"You," he said, pointing to Tur. "Watch the whelp. Don't you dare take your eyes off him again."

She scampered around him and stood over P'thon.

"And you." The Jiral pointed to Yin. "Shut up. And lose the knife."

The Kig-Yaress opened her mouth to argue, but the Brute pulled the dressing aside to reveal a cluster of stab wounds that spread across his neck and shoulder. They'd been crudely stitched closed, and were weeping blood.

"Another Kig-Yar did this to me this morning. She got away before I could wring her neck. So shut up and lose the knife before I decide that one scrawny nest-whore is as good as another, and take it out on you."

The knife clattered to the deck. Timidly, she opened rations with her thumbclaw and cooked those instead.

The Jiral trudged back to his seat, checked the charge on his plasma repeater, and went back to dressing his wounds.

Tur stood guard over P'thon, but she wouldn't meet his eyes. Instead, her gaze wandered from P'thon to the Brute, and then to the warehouses all around them. Every once in a while, when she was convinced that neither Yin nor the Brute were looking, she stole a glance at the communication device strapped to her wrist.

She was afraid, P'thon realized. And she was getting more frightened every time she looked at her comms.

* * *

 **Evening Period, Fiefdom Port of Clan Umtalla**

Quatch was surprised to find that he wasn't afraid.

He, Bon, and Heik had been moving down the street, darting from cover to cover, when they heard the rumble of approaching vehicles. Without a second thought, Quatch seized Heik by the collar and shoved him toward a ruined storefront that gaped like an empty skull.

All three of them hid in the back, and Quatch watched as two Brute war-plows rolled past, followed by a troop carrier and an armored gun carriage. The Jirals were alert, and some peered into the murk inside the store, but none spotted him.

He felt fear, but he wasn't afraid. He was reminded of all the times he'd hidden in rubble as Human forces drove by, with their all-terrain Growlers and Crawlers that bore guns that could level a building in one shot. His time in the Legion had taught him how to lay low and stay quiet, and now he could savor the fact that some mad bastard wasn't going to order him to charge out of cover and attack a convoy from behind.

In sharp contrast, Heik sat beside him, shivering in terror. He clutched a small holdout pistol that Quatch had found for him like a pilgrim might clutch a sacred icon.

On Quatch's other side, Bon chattered his teeth in exasperation. He sized Heik up contemptuously, as if he were an expert in what quality soldiering material looked like. "What possessed you to bring this egg-tooth along?"

"Because it might take two of us to carry the Sangheili, and a third to carry a gun."

"But why him? Why not Sap? He's plenty good in a fight."

"Because if winning bar fights were my sole criteria for this job, I'd have left you behind and taken Taol."

Bon winced at the memory of that particular fight and shut up.

Truth be told, there weren't any good options. Quatch wasn't sure that any of the crew would keep their heads in a firefight, save for Taol. Heik was young, but he'd asked time and time again what life was like in the Legions. He'd spent evenings listening with rapt attention as Quatch traded war stories with other veterans.

Now he was as pale as a corpse, and and he was as stiff as a statue. Quatch threw an arm over his shoulders, and that seemed to help.

Moments passed, the rumble of vehicles faded, and eventually Quatch stood and beckoned them to follow.

They slipped out into the street and found themselves tracing the convoy's tracks. Quatch had been struck by a wild fear that the convoy was taking the Sangheili away, but they'd come from the wrong direction and they continued on without stopping.

In fact, they were travelling away from the docks. They were going toward the conduit-highways that led to the Unbreakable Spine. Perhaps they were a welcome party for the waves of evacuees coming up the Spire.

Quatch shrugged and kept moving.

It was getting dark now, and not just from the smoke that gathered overhead and blotted out the skylights. The evening period was getting close to nighttime, and the lights were dimming of their own accord. For that reason, they were able to get close to their targets.

They found the Sangheili captive in a shallow amphitheater down the street from an open warehouse that the Brutes were systematically raiding. They hid in a corner where the wall that separated the amphitheater from the street met a battered statue that was barely recognizable as a Sangheili.

Between the shouts and the crashing of crates and the whine of vehicles coming and going, Quatch doubted that any of the Brutes would hear a few gunshots. And the Unggoy drivers in the queue of cargo sleds didn't look like fighters. No, he and the others could grab the Sangheili and be long gone by the time anybody could respond.

Quatch carefully peeked out of cover and studied his adversary. He spied the Sangheili, lying below the stage, and he saw three guards. One, a Kig-Yar, was standing watch over the prisoner. Another was on the amphitheater's stage, turning rations over a portable cookstove. The third was a Jiralhanae, who sat on a bench at the base of the stage with an open medical kit on his lap. He was applying paste and bandages to a wound on his shoulder. Quatch was reminded of the Brute he'd seen guarding the slave-soldiers earlier.

He thought of taking a picture to better show Heik and Bon what they were up against, but decided against it. Instead he dropped back behind cover, pulled a grease pencil from a pocket, and began writing on the wall.

 _'_ _3 guards,'_ he wrote. _'_ _2 Kig-Yar and a Jiral.'_

He drew a rounded diamond. That was the amphitheater. He added three dots and a bar to the leftmost corner to show the guards and the captive. Then he drew an arc around the left side of the diamond to represent the low wall, and added a square at the midpoint of the arc for the statue.

One dot was placed at the top of the arc where one of the entrances was, and he pointed to Heik. Then he placed another dot by the statue and pointed to Bon. Then he placed a third at the bottom of the arc, where the other entrance was, and pointed to himself.

Heik bobbed his head to show that he understood.

 _'_ _I shoot first and kill the Jiral,'_ he scrawled. _'_ _When you hear me fire, pop up and shoot at guards. Don't aim. Keep shooting. Make guards keep heads down. Leave precise shooting to me. Understand?'_

Heik never stopped bobbing his head. Bon looked doubtful. Quatch circled the last word and glared at Bon until the keelworker clicked his jaws in the affirmative.

Quatch flashed the sign for good luck, hefted the longarm spiker, and trotted along the wall, which was about chest height for a Sangheili.

The longarm spiker was every bit a Brute weapon, built along lines that suggested that some Brute chieftain had developed a fondness for the beam rifle, but decided he'd rather have a gun with a bayonet. The forend was heavy with recoil compensators and the rear end terminated in a shoulder stock. For Jiralhanae, these features tamed the weapon's kick and made quick follow-up shots possible. For lesser mortals like Quatch, they made it possible to fire the gun at all.

When he was in position, Quatch extracted the clip from the gun's magazine, and counted his shots. The ammunition for spikers came in segmented blocks of metal, and Quatch counted nine segments left. Each cycle of the gun's action sheared off a segment, swaged it down, and hammered it with magnetic and electrochemical forces to accelerate the segment down the barrel. The result was a red-hot spike of alloy and exotic matter with far more penetration power than its velocity would suggest.

In the hands of the Fist, Quatch had seen this weapon punch gaping holes in a singleship's armor. He had no doubt it would kill a Brute in one blow.

The clip went back in the rifle, and Quatch took a deep breath to calm his nerves. To his surprise, he didn't need it. He was already at peace. He knew his weapon. He knew his target. He had the element of surprise. This was going to be no trouble whatsoever.

He stepped out of cover, knelt, and raised his weapon.

The longarm spiker had a safety catch that dragged heavily and fell into place with an audible click.

The Brute's head snapped up, and he locked eyes with Quatch. From across the amphitheater, Quatch and Atroposus recognized each other.

"Shit!" Quatch cursed as he brought the spiker to his shoulder.

Atroposus bellowed in alarm and dove for cover. The bag of medical supplies and the bench he was seated upon went flying. The spike, fired too late and too low, shattered the table behind him.

Two more hasty shots buried themselves in the tables around the Brute, and then Quatch lost sight of him. The cook though, she was staring wildly about her, still surprised and unsure of where the shots were coming from. Quatch buried a spike in her back, and she and her cookstove went tumbling.

Then the Brute came around one of the Yanme'e roosts, his plasma repeater already up and spitting fire.

A fusillade of plasma filled the air where Quatch had been standing a moment before, but he'd already dodged into cover. Then the plasma tore into the wall, and Quatch realized that it wasn't as thick as he'd believed.

Gouts of flame punched through the wall. Shards of stone rained down upon him. He was flat against the pavement, eyes shut tight. He may have screamed, he wasn't sure, but he tasted ash.

For an eternity, he felt the storm rage over him, but eventually it faded as Atroposus turned his wrath against one of the others.

He scrambled to his feet, gun in both arms, and sprinted hunched over so as not to be seen. The wall wasn't cover, it was treacherous concealment. The only cover was the thick base of the statue, and Quatch wanted to be there more than anything else his heart had ever desired.

Bon was crouched behind the statue, his coveralls singed from near misses. He positively glared at the boatswain and snarled "What happened?"

"Didn't work," Quatch shouted back.

"What?"

The boatswain didn't know what to say. He was shocked, and running high on the fright-and-flight instinct, and unable to put into words his amazement that the Fates had conspired to pit them against the same Jiral that Taol had knifed when they escaped from the docks. Even if he could, he wasn't sure Bon would understand over the sound of Atroposus cursing and bellowing every slur for a female Kig-Yar that Quatch had ever heard.

Bon shouted something else, but it was lost under another salvo of plasma. Streamers of blue light passed just over their heads, or gouged holes in the wall. Plasma scoured the statue overhead, and a steady patter of glowing metal dripped to the pavement.

"What now, chief?" Bon snarled.

He would've told Bon to shut up and keep shooting, but he was distracted by an idea that struck him when he saw the light glinting off Bon's bald head.

"Run."

"What?"

"When I say so, run out there and draw his fire! I'll pop up and shoot him!"

"Draw his _what?"_

The stream of plasma bolts had slowed to a crawl. Quatch wondered if Atroposus was too enraged to remember how to trip the active cooldown.

"Out, damn you! Before he vents his weapon!"

Quatch shoved. Bon stumbled and then ran. Quatch saw the hail of plasma fire shift direction. He leaped to his feet and brought the longarm spiker to bear, but there was a roost blocking his line of fire. He cursed and turned to reposition.

He turned just in time to see Bon go down. The keelworker had, true to Quatch's orders, ran with his head held high. Then he was caught in a firestorm of plasma and splintered stone. He ducked, turned, scrabbled claw against tile, and ran back for the safety of the statue.

Then a bolt of blue energy hit him above the elbow. Quatch saw the limb separate in an explosion of meat, fabric and steam.

He stumbled and fell face-first to the ground.

Quatch screamed Bon's name. Instincts warred within him. Old combat instincts told him to stay put, or to take the shot. Bon was a goner, as good as dead. It wasn't worth his life to cross that hailstorm of plasma fire. Other instincts fought back. He felt loyalty and responsibility, and he felt that he'd already put so much time and effort into saving Bon's ass, he couldn't stop now.

With a shout, he charged. He seized Bon by the beak and the good limb and hauled him back to the safety of the statue, then rolled him over and examined the wound.

He knew from experience that plasma wounds were horrible. They burned hot enough to sear flesh into scar tissue, but were never so precise as to completely cauterize the wound. Then trapped steam and muscle contractions would rip the wound open again. Bon's coveralls had clamped down on the wound, but they were only designed to seal tears and micrometeorite holes. They couldn't close off a wound like this.

With practiced hands, he tore off one of Bon's belts, wrapped it twice around the stump of an arm, pulled tight, and then pressed the buckle shut. It was too dark to see if that had done anything to stem the loss of blood, but he had other things to worry about.

For one thing, the steady _whup-whup-whup_ of the plasma repeater had died, and so had the cracks of vaporizing stone. And he'd just heard Atroposus shout something about a snaggletoothed nest-whore. That wasn't anything new, but the Brute was shouting it closer.

Atroposus crashed through the wall in an avalanche of masonry and fur. He spun wildly about, sniffing heavily, searching for his hated prey by smell as much as sight. Quatch realized that he was looking into the maddened eyes and contorted face of a Brute given over to blood rage.

Heart hammering, he lunged for the spiker. He heard the Brute spin, alerted by the sudden movement, and howl in anger.

Quatch rolled over, trying to bring the longarm spiker to bear as his hand sought the trigger. He looked up and saw that Atroposus was already in the air, with one arm drawn back behind his head. There was a length of metal rod clutched in that hand like a shortspear.

The spiker's bayonet caught Atroposus in the chest and sank in.

The shortspear plunged through the tile by Quatch's head, sounding for all the world like a thunderclap.

The buttstock slammed against the pavement.

The Brute's ribs cracked as the muzzle of the gun pressed into his chest.

A heartbeat later, Quatch's finger found the trigger and squeezed.

Hair caught fire, and blood exploded from the Brute's mouth and chest. For but a moment, the massive internal trauma caused by the spike as it punched through Atroposus's body overwhelmed his blood rage. That was long enough for Quatch to scoot out from underneath the Brute and dance away from his grasping hands.

The rage returned, but it was too little and too late. Atroposus was dying. The Brute struggled to stand from the tripod formed by his knees and the longarm spiker, but his legs would not respond, and already the strength was leaving his body. He had the strength to knock the longarm spiker out from underneath him, but no more.

Atroposus rolled over on his side and the life went out of his eyes.

When Quatch tried to pull the longarm spiker out from under Atroposus, it wouldn't come. The bayonet had lodged between two ribs and curled into a hook when the Brute fell. Even with one foot planted against the Brute and putting his back into it, he couldn't pull it free.

The bayonet latch gave him trouble when he tried it. He'd seen the Fist dismount the bayonet in the same swift motion he'd lopped off Shipmaster Val's head, but the exact technique eluded him.

Then he heard Heik scream, and he heard more gunfire.

Quatch looked around for Bon's gun, but it was lost in the rubble where the Jiral had burst through the wall. With a curse and a prayer, he went back to fumbling with the bayonet.

* * *

 **Evening Period, Meal Commons of the Umtalla Warehouses**

Heik sprang out of cover as the first gunshot echoed through the amphitheater, and he peppered the stage with bolts from his plasma pistol. His shots were a deep blue in color and tightly focused, and the little handgun was the kind that was meant to be slipped into a pocket. Quatch had assured him that it would be lethal against a Yanme'e or Unggoy, and a considerable inconvenience to an unarmored Sangheili.

By process of elimination, he knew that the little gun was no use at all against a Brute, and he'd resolved to follow Quatch's orders and leave the Brute to him.

In fact, he'd let Quatch deal with the other guards. Armor or no, he wasn't sold on the idea of killing fellow Kig-Yar. But he could lay down suppressive fire. He could lay it down for as long as the little gun's battery held out.

A Jiral charged into view with a longarm plasma rifle of some kind in hand, and Heik wondered if this was a fourth guard that the boatswain had missed.

Then the Brute cut loose against Quatch's position. Heik hadn't seen Atroposus cut a line into the deck earlier that day, and had no clue of the weapon's destructive potential. But he knew that he had to do something, so he raised the pistol, took aim, and squeezed off a careful shot.

A little bolt of light buried into the Brute's hip. The Brute bellowed in pain and swung the weapon about, and Heik received an instant education on the difference between concealment and cover. Fire ripped through the wall. He was burned by hot ash and cut by shrapnel, and he was knocked to the ground.

He rolled and scampered for the only cover he could see: one of the Yanme'e roosts. It was a pillar of wood and stone, as wide as Heik's armspan, and he hoped it was solid all the way through.

Belatedly, the Brute panned to track him. Heik still had to cross a dozen paces of open ground. Plasma bolts passed behind him and in front of him, fewer in number than before.

Then he made it. Plasma bit into the pillar and splinters of wood and masonry flew to either side of him, but he was safe.

He looked from the pistol in his hand to the craters in the stone wall, and felt a deep injustice in the universe. He was outgunned, and too frightened to run or lay down suppressing fire. The Jiral was shouting barely coherent words, but Heik's mind was too steeped in terror to connect the words with meaning.

Then he saw Bon sprinting, and he saw Bon go down. The Brute's cries became more frenzied until he charged across the amphitheater in a bare-knuckled lope that threw tables and benches aside. Then the Brute charged through what remained of the wall, and Heik knew Bon and Quatch were gone for sure.

So he rounded the roost and charged the stage. He had a half-baked idea lodged in his head to steal the Sangheili and flee back to the Harbormaster's office. He felt that there were a few holes in that plan, but he did not consider himself to be a very smart man.

He rushed down the aisle, and didn't notice her until it was too late. She didn't see him either. The last guard was hiding behind a table and craning her neck as if to see what had become of the Brute. They were almost on top of each other, but Heik saw her first, and he already had his gun up. The first two shots burned into the table beside her. The pistol misfired on the third and fourth shot, and did nothing after that.

Heik blanched and fled for the nearest roost, but then two plasma bolts passed so close that they burned his shoulder. He changed direction and tried to run for an overturned table, but she was already there.

The guard kicked his legs out from underneath him, and he hit the ground hard. Then she kicked him in the stomach and knocked the wind out of him. Then she kicked him over on his back. Finally she kicked the pistol from his nerveless hands.

"Who are you people?" she shrieked as she leveled a plasma pistol at him. "Who?"

He tried to answer, but his lungs weren't working with his tongue, and the muzzle of the plasma pistol was as bright as sunlight.

"Crew!" he wheezed. " _Libation_! We're trying to get home."

"Crew," she replied, and Heik heard a strange lilt to her voice, an accent he couldn't place. He couldn't see her eyes behind the glare of her pistol, but he thought she was looking at his vest. Heik was only an apprentice signalman, but he warranted the burnt-orange company uniform of the bridge crew. Embroidered in red, copper, and black thread was his name, his rank, the _Libation's_ hull number, and the guild logo.

" _Libation_. You're a sailor! You've got a ship? No," she corrected herself immediately, and he thought he heard some of the hope fade from her voice. "You came for the Sangheili. You wouldn't do that unless you were desperate."

She shut up to think and listen. Heik couldn't see her face, only the outline of her helmet. It was quiet now that the Jiral wasn't ranting and shooting, but it wasn't silent. He heard the cries of Unggoy and the sound of Brutes barking orders to one another.

"Get up," she said, and she pulled him to his feet. "I'm coming with you."

Over her shoulder, Heik saw Quatch step out of the hole that the Jiral had broken through the wall, raise the longarm spiker, and motion for him to step out of the way.

"She's with us!" he cried. She turned and hissed in alarm.

"Hurry up, grab that prisoner and go!" Quatch shouted back. Then he disappeared behind the wall.

"You are with us, right?" Heik asked.

"Yes."

"Why?"

She looked at him, and Heik saw a mixture of fear and desperation that he'd only ever seen on his own shipmates' faces this very day, when they'd hidden from the advancing armies of Jiralhanae.

"Something very bad is coming our way. Come on, help me carry the whelp."

He didn't follow her. Instead, he searched around the broken tables until he found the weapon that the Brute had dropped. It was built like an elongated plasma rifle with a rotor forward of the grip. It was still warm from the firefight, and it felt powerful in his hands. Heik took it with him and resolved to never let it go.

Then he climbed up on the stage, where the other guard had died. The spike had ruined her armor, but her helmet was about his size. He unbuckled it and jammed it on his head. The fit was tight, and he didn't like how it crushed his quills, but it was better than nothing.

"Hey, kid! Get down here!" the guard hissed. She had cut the Sangheili's bonds, and she was already supporting him with one shoulder. "The whelp is injured. He can't walk on his own."

Heik climbed down and took the Sangheili by the other shoulder. To his surprise, the Sangheili was a small kid. He only came up to Heik's chin. Together, the three of them strode up the aisle.

"I'm Occetica Heik, by the way. From Gast Colony. And that up there is my Shipmaster. I don't think I got your name."

"Tur," she grunted. "Surnames can wait."

The Sangheili simply said "P'thon," and nothing else. No surname, and no list of famous kin. But it was an unusual circumstance for introductions, and Heik didn't blame him for neglecting the formalities.

"P'thon 'Umtalla?" Heik said. "If so, your elder sent us to save you."

The kid didn't reply. He just bowed his head and made a keening sound.

When they got to the top, they found Quatch waiting for them. The boatswain was covered in the blood of Kig-Yar and Jiralhanae, and the longarm spiker hung limply from one arm. The other arm supported Bon, who looked like he was at Death's door, but could at least keep his feet under him.

Quatch pointed toward the Harbormaster's office, and they all ran, or staggered as fast as possible. All around them echoed the sound of the Jiralhanae closing in.

* * *

 **A/N: Well, that chapter turned out a bit longer than I expected. Next chapter will follow Alcyonius, and should be up next week.**

 **It's funny, I've had this scene in mind for about a year and a half, almost as long as I've been planning this story. The idea has changed a lot since then, with characters added and locations shifted, but I thought I had it set when I sat down to write this chapter. But the characters still surprised me, and so did their reactions to being thrown into combat.**


	7. Sworn Loyalty

**"Obedience can be coerced, but loyalty cannot be commanded. The hearts and minds of the Jiralhanae warrior are given only to the rare breed of leader who can earn them. This is why the true Jiralhanae chafes under the leadership of the Sangheili. The split-lips demand we submit to them, and yet what have they shown us in return but deception and cruelty?"**  
 **-Tartarus**

* * *

 **Midday, Near the Nape of the Unbroken Spine**

Alcyonius met with his Cheiftain to confirm his orders from the Warmaster, and then he set out for the terrace where the Legion was to make its last stand. He was nearly there when the Sangheili found him.

A Phantom dropship flew low over his convoy, flanked by a pair of wailing singleships. The Phantom crossed the street overhead and disappeared over the rooftops before anyone could react, but a cry of alarm went up. All along the length of the convoy, turrets came to life and warriors scrambled to ready their weapons.

"Hold fire," Alcyonius bellowed into his comm. "Hold your fire!"

"Captain-Major," someone replied. "It bears the markings of a Sangheili vessel!"

"Do you think I've gone blind?" he shouted back. "I told you all to expect an envoy to come crawling to us, and that's them! Hold your fire, and slow to half speed. Leleb, signal them to land!"

 _'_ _Crawling'_ Alcyonius thought bitterly as the Phantom circled back into view. It did indeed bear the markings of a Sangheili vessel. Fat sigils in yellow paint had been hurriedly scrawled on the sides and the nose so that it wouldn't be fired upon by Sangheili troops. With their wealth of dropships, the Sangheili could reposition at will, yet Jiralhanae legions like the one Alcyonius led relied on ground vehicles or larger and less nimble dropships for transport.

And now that the shooting had stopped and word of the parasite's advent was spreading, the citizens of High Charity were packing up all they could carry and fleeing for the docks. Even now, when it looked like a firefight was about to break out between the Sangheili and the Jiralhanae, the refugees could scarcely press out of the way.

Dutifully, reluctantly, the vehicles of the First Maniple slowed down and powered down their weapons. Only his troop carrier kept going, so that it passed the chariots that had taken point and pulled ahead of the convoy.

The Phantom came to a stop over the street ahead, and the purple light of a gravity lift speared out of its belly. The two singleship escorts peeled off and circled overhead as two Sangheili warriors in crimson armor descended from the craft's belly.

Alcyonius recognized their armor, with the crimson plates and the full-faced helmets with glowing eyeslits and bladed cheek guards. Temple-guardians. Assassins.

He was tempted to go back on his order and let the men open fire, but a third Sangheili descended, and he wore standard scarlet armor.

The Sangheili sent a major for an envoy, then. That wasn't a good sign. A major was junior enough that it wouldn't be a complete disaster for the Sangheili if Alcyonius slew him, so junior that it was doubtful that he could truly speak for a Fieldmaster unless he was held in esteem beyond his rank.

No more warriors disembarked from the Phantom. A few citizens rushed the gravity lift before the dropship could leave, but the bodyguards drew blades and cut with deadly precision until the crowd opened back up. None lost their lives, but hands and fingers littered the ground.

The Captain-Major barked an order to his driver, crawled out of the top hatch, and took a running leap off the front of the troop carrier. He landed with a rattle of armor plate and advanced on the envoy.

"I am Captain-Major Alcyonius Aristóchyr Magni, and I command the Ninth Dragoon Legion of Ushar-Kho," he shouted over the babble of the refugees and the whine of vehicles. "Who has been sent to bargain with me?"

"I know who you are, Alcyonius of Moesia," the Sangheili Major replied. His voice needed artificial amplification to carry over the crowd. "I am Lehe 'Osodnee, godson of Padishar Lethe ur 'Kandonomee, and I stand in service of Aritham 'Kandonomee."

"Yes, but what unit are you with?"

Lehe was stunned, and cocked his head at Alcyonius. "Have you been told nothing?"

Alcyonius balled his hands into fists. "I asked you a question."

"I serve the Vociferous Quincunx Guards, the honored Seventeenth Air Defense Division Legion of Sangheilios," the Sangheili replied. "Will you answer my question in turn?"

"It's been a long day, and it's not even half over," Alcyonius said. By this time, he had reached the envoy, and his troop carrier wasn't far behind. "I accept your commander's offer of help, and promise you safe conduct. Now get in the damn troop carrier."

The First Maniple still advanced down the street. War chariots led the way with their bladed wheels, so as to encourage the citizens to quickly clear the way. Behind those were lines of troop carriers and three-gun raiders that carried the bulk of the Maniple's infantry. In the face of this metal juggernaut, the crowds parted like a river around a rock.

Before he boarded his command vehicle, Alcyonius spared the citizens one last look. Unggoy laborers walked elbow-to-thigh with Sangheili artisans and Kig-Yar merchants and flightless castes of Yanme'e. To live upon High Charity was to be counted as the richest of the faithful. Accordingly, he saw very few Jiralhanae. What few there were would likely be plucked out of the crowds and pressed into service as his men passed by.

They were, all of them, civilians with no belly for a fight. Alcyonius dismissed them as weak and worthless, only existing to get in the way, but then he imagined the Parasite taking them and turning them against his men. He felt an ice-cold spike of fear stab into his heart. Thank the gods that the citizens had somewhere else to go.

With a growl, he yanked open the rear hatch to his troop carrier and led the Sangheili inside.

The other two occupants did not take kindly to being locked in close quarters with the Sangheili. Leleb yelped and breathed heavily, while Major Beringus stood and rested his hand on his belt, just over his sidearm.

Lehe took a seat, but his bodyguards were not so trusting. They each found a corner between the ready-seats and stood guard, ready to take cover or intercept anyone who rushed the envoy.

"Beringus, Leleb, at ease," Alcyonius ordered. He pushed past the near bodyguard and sat down in the seat across from Lehe. "So. Your Legion took a beating this morning. What I need to know is, how many of you are left?"

There was an art to speaking to Sangheili. One had to indulge them in their pride and obey ancient rules of etiquette. But Alcyonius was too tired and too pressed for time to bother, and it looked as if Lehe felt the same way. After an uncomfortable pause, he began reciting troop numbers.

"After we reorganize to cover our losses, the Quincunx Guards will have four batteries of mobile anti-air artillery to their name. Our loses were concentrated elsewhere. Your compatriots singled out our support units, and our guard regiment fought valiantly to protect them. Both are nigh half-spent. There are perhaps three dozen guardsmen left, and the lances they command are full of walking wounded."

"Can you call up reserves?"

"There are no reserves. What new troops we can muster are ancient combat veterans and civilian drivers with cargo trucks. Both are a paltry replacement for the fine warriors we have lost."

That was not good news. Alcyonius had been promised air defenses, but the force he was inheriting was as brittle as a plaster icon in the hands of a destitute pilgrim. From the sound of it, the Quincunx Guards had lost the logistical endurance for a prolonged fight. And if the guards units were as weakened as Lehe claimed, they would break under the first hard push, and then the precious artillery would be overrun.

"You may as well have no infantry screening you. I'll have to commit my own troops."

"All we ask is a secure place on high ground to site our artillery, and that our flanks be defended well," Lehe said. "Hear me now, protect us, and we shall protect you."

Alcyonius heard, and he noticed what the envoy wasn't promising.

"What if we have to fall back or reposition?"

"Considerations will be made. I shall communicate your intent to my commander, so that he may take appropriate action."

"Considerations?" Major Beringus asked as if he couldn't believe his ears.

"Appropriate actions?" Alcyonius echoed. "No. If I order my Legion to fall back, I must know that you won't be left behind. If I order a counterattack, I need to know that my troops will be supported."

Lehe was utterly unfazed. "We will fight the Parasite to our dying breath, and we will fight as we see fit. What else could you ask of us?"

"I would have your Fieldmaster come bargain with me directly, rather than send some flunky here to make excuses for him!"

"You wish to order us about as if we were some wayward maniple of Jiral thugs to be brought back into the fold?" Lehe asked. "You will rant and rage in vain. It will not happen. You cannot command the loyalty of Sangheili warriors."

 _'_ _Loyalty.'_ Alcyonius snorted derisively at the thought. The Sangheili talked a great deal about duty and loyalty, but the true test of obedience was in following orders contrary to one's desires. For thousands of years, the Sangheili had been the ones giving orders, and even then their history was a long tale of provinces and warlords defying the rule of the High Council.

Just this morning, the Sangheili race had been chastised for their failures, and how had that ended? Rebellion and heresy. Who was this worm to speak to Alcyonius of loyalty?

"You signed the cease-fire," Alcyonius said as he leaned forward in his seat. "And you pledged to fight for me!"

"We chose rebellion over servitude," Lehe replied, with an arrogance that made the Captain-Major want to tear him jaw from jaw. "We agreed to the cease-fire to save the Holy City, but we did not submit. We have our honor. The men would sooner take their own lives than take orders from you."

"My men would sooner kill you than let you within their lines, and yet they won't. Because I have ordered it be done, and they will listen. Are you Sangheili too stiff-necked to follow orders from their own Fieldmaster?"

"Our hearts are strong and our eyes can see. Even if my commander were to repeat your orders, the men would know that they first dropped from the mouth of a Brute."

Alcyonius stood furiously, and the bodyguards sprang from cover. Blades appeared in their hands, hot violet blades shot through with veins of red energy. Beringus snarled and drew his spike rifle, but Alcyonius held up a fist.

"Tell your guards to quench their blades. I may throw you into the streets outside, but I'm not about to kill you."

Lehe studied the Captain-Major warily, and finally conceded. He drummed his mandibles once, and the guards reluctantly dismissed their blades and returned to their stations. Beringus too sheathed his weapon.

"Good. Now follow me," Alcyonius said as he made his way to the ladder at the fore end of the troop bay.

He could not have picked a more fortuitous time to go up top. As he and Lehe crawled out of the hatch and stood atop the troop carrier, the convoy was rolling down a wide axial highway that crossed the apex of the terrace. They had an uninterrupted view before and behind them.

Before the convoy was the last segment of the Unbreakable Spine, where it met the base of High Charity. A thicket of girders and habitats rose from the Spine to the bulkhead-sky above, and disappeared around the horizon to the left and the right.

There lay some of the richest and most ancient streets of the Holy Ecumene, but they would not survive the day. Dozens of excavation walkers poured their fire into the habitats, while squadrons of singleships patrolled the airspace, ready to shoot down anything that fled the destruction.

The Flood had not yet arrived, but that didn't matter. The Minister of the Common Weal had met with the three Warmasters, and in his wisdom he had cut High Charity at the nape of the Spine. With that cut he separated the fortunate who might be saved from the poor bastards who were condemned to the worst of all possible fates. Between the two halves, the armies of Tartarus were ordered to create a firebreak that would stem the Floodtides. Cut off the head, so that the cancer would not spread to the body.

It was futile. There was not enough time.

A city had grown all along the length of the Unbreakable Spine like moss on a tree, and even the bulkhead-sky that sheathed the Spine was riddled with highways and infrastructure. There were a thousand streets and a million little alleys between the firebreak and the primary defensive lines on the terrace. Once the Parasite broke through, it would be impossible to hold that district.

As Alcyonius watched, Lehe's gaze wandered from the firebreak to the length of the Unbreakable Spine behind them. It was only possible to see so far, for the Spires of Gifting had their roots on the Unbreakable Spine, and they rose up and disappeared into the bulkhead-sky like trees of legend. Between the spires were free-floating habitat rings, each with room for hundreds of thousands of souls.

Between Spine, Spire, and ring, the air was thick with smoke and shoals of passenger aircraft packed full with fleeing citizens.

"Well?" Alcyonius asked.

Lehe regarded him with the odd serenity he'd seen from Sangheili right before they charged a Human machine gun nest with a sword and a grenade. "Alcyonius, I have lived within the Holiest of Cities for years. I have walked through her streets and I have felt the endless tides of her history. And I know we cannot possibly defend her. Your firebreak will not hold, and neither shall this terrace."

"You know how the Parasite will defeat us, then?"

"It will probe us," Lehe declared. "One attack after another, launched through the gaps in your firewall. At a time of its choosing, it will commit the full strength of its thrall-armies and overrun us. A million captured aircars will pour through, so many that we will despair to shoot down one twelfth of their number. And each one will bear the Parasite's foul taint into our territory."

That matched up perfectly with what Alcyonius had heard of fighting on the Halo. The Flood ebbed and flowed, infiltrating or striking with brute force. But when it could use air vehicles to outmaneuver the Covenant faithful, it did.

" _Shon'ai_ ," Lehe said; a prayer in one word. "There is nothing left to do, but decide how we shall die."

"Yes indeed," Alcyonius said. "How will you go? Will you and your kind fight to the last?"

"We shall."

"Then what?"

"We will fight to the last," Lehe repeated, andas if explaining a simple concept to a difficult child. "We will fight until the Parasite overwhelms us, and with our dying breath we shall take our own lives."

"Then what?" Alcyonius asked, but Lehe had no answer, so he pressed forward. "You will be devoured, and you will be corrupted to the core. A single moment of existence under the Parasite's yoke is an eternity of torment. And when Tartarus summons the Halo's holy light, all that is evil and impure will be burned away, and there will be nothing left of you. Fight the Parasite alone, if you wish. Your reward will be agony and annihilation."

Lehe turned away from the Captain-Major, but Alcyonius knew his words had struck home. He could smell fear.

"What would you do?" the envoy asked.

"We'll fall back if we have to, and we'll keep fighting. Let the Parasite spend its strength upon our lines. May it crash an aircar on every street of this terrace. We'll shoot our way out and put the whole district to the torch."

"That is why you need to coordinate with us," Lehe mused. "To time the maneuver. We don't need to hold the Parasite. We just need to delay it. And survive."

"Tartarus has the index," Alcyonius said. "And as we speak, he has departed to the surface of Halo. We will not have to wait long."

Lehe clicked his jaws and turned away from the firebreak. "Very well. I will contact my Fieldmaster. Perhaps a more senior officer will be sent to replace me, or perhaps the Fieldmaster himself will come bargain with you. Impossible times bring about impossible solutions."

Alcyonius wished, not for the first time, that he could have been put in charge of a legion of Sangheili. They were weak, but one could buy their loyalty with words alone.

* * *

 **A/N: Well, it's a month late, but hopefully it was worth it. It was a pretty busy month to write in, and it was a difficult story to write. I wound up rewriting most of the chapter three times over before it finally caught on, and ultimately I wound up dividing the chapter in two. The next half will be posted next Sunday. It still needs some polishing.**


	8. Paradise Lost

_**A commander does not earn his right to lead by strength of arms, but by clarity of vision and by will. He must be a new man, free of the short-sighted ambitions and prejudices that have kept us weak and divided for so long. It is the right of the commanded to test he who would lead them, and should he not measure up, it is their duty to cast him down!"**_

 _ **-**_ **Tartarus**

* * *

 **Midday Period, Ur'lashnan Mercantile District, Near the Nape of the Unbreakable Spine**

When the convoy arrived at the terrace, Alcyonius climbed up through the top hatch to survey the nascent defenses. Thousands of civilians flooded the streets, evicted from their homes and businesses and herded toward the nearest spire. Hundreds more had been conscripted into work gangs. Buildings were closed up or demolished, and the streets were cleared to form clear firing lanes.

It was good work, but it was only the beginning.

His approval turned to trepidation and then unease as the convoy reached the grand auction hall where his headquarters was supposed to have been set up. A hundred Jiralhanae warriors were waiting for him, but it was less of a welcoming party than a guarded roadblock.

Furniture and statues had been hauled out of the auction hall and heaped into barricades. Behind those barricades lurked mortar carriages, and half a dozen turrets were arranged in an arc so as to catch anything that came down the road in a crossfire.

Alcyonius sighed.

"Stay here," he said to Lehe. "The staff meeting will begin in just a few minutes. First, I've got to go knock sense into my men. I'll call for you when I'm ready."

He surveyed the roadblock one last time before dismounting. The warriors who stood guard around the auction hall stood tall and stern, ready to inflict violence at a moment's notice. But to his seasoned eye, they looked uncertain. Confused. They held themselves like soldiers ordered to stop in the middle of a drill and stand at attention without being told why.

That meant that the warriors did not know why they were ordered to stand against Alcyonius, or if they were told, they didn't believe the reason. He took heart in that. If this was a coup, then it was an officer's revolt.

"Captain-Major!" a warrior hailed him as he dismounted. It was Major Gruccius, one of the better infantry officers in the Second Maniple. "First of the Legion, is it true? Are you making peace with the Sangheili?"

"Under orders from the Warmaster, a ceasefire has been declared."

"But why? They have not surrendered. They still contest our ascension."

"Because the Parasite has taken hold in the crown of High Charity. Have you not heard? It spreads unchecked!"

"But the Seventh and Twentieth Combined Armies are up there, as well as Tartarus's Chosen. Surely, they can contain the outbreak."

Alcyonius stopped and took Graccius by the shoulder. "This is a force that even the Forerunners feared! What are we to it but food?"

Understanding flashed across the Major's face, and then all his blood drained away. "If the Forerunners could not contain the Flood, what chance do we have?"

"Tartarus has gone to the Halo to channel its holy light. Until then, we must hold the line, or the Parasite will spread to the far reaches of the empire. How have you not heard?"

The Major shook his head. "Communications have been confused."

"Damn it. Leleb is in my transport. Get the details from him and spread the word. Tell the men only what you must so that they know what the stakes are. And these warriors you've got standing around, get them to work on the defenses!"

Graccius clasped a fist to his chest and sprinted for the transport. Alcyonius flagged down Captain-Minor Titopicus, commander of the First Maniple. "Get your maniple to work on the defenses. And protect the envoy with your life. Without him and his artillery, this terrace is defenseless."

"Commander," Titopicus said, and Alcyonius wasn't sure if it was an acknowledgment or a question.

"Do it. I'll call for you when the planning session starts."

Alcyonius turned and sprinted for the auction hall. He took the steps two at a time and burst through the front doors.

The headquarters inside was the model of the Jiralhanae war machine. Unggoy communications specialists and a few Kig-Yar technicians hovered around a dozen communication booths. Holoprojectors displayed sensor feeds from turrets and scout units for watchmasters to coordinate, while other projectors played sermons from magistral San'Shyuum clerics.

At the center of it all was a map table, around which were clustered the elite officers of the Ninth Dragoon Legion of Ushar-Kho.

It was an efficient war machine, and yet it rang hollow. There was a foul smell in the air.

That stench. Alcyonius had smelled it before.

It was the stink of naked ambition and overweening pride. Some daft bastard already thought himself the new Captain-Major.

Alcyonius gritted his teeth. This wasn't the first time one of this officers tried to usurp his command. Not even the twelfth. Again and again they came, some challenging him to duels and others coming at him in ambush, and each time he'd won. When would they learn?

The officers looked up to him, some impassively, some with defiant faces. He wondered which one it was. He suspected Captain-Minor Lanthasmus, or Captain-Minor Pheristus. They'd both ignored Alcyonius's orders in the last battle, and raced off in search of their own glory, and it had nearly cost the Legion this terrace. But no, they were smiling, but they weren't challenging him.

"Whichever one of you thinks you can take me, get it over with. I am not a patient man today."

"You have patience enough for the Sangheili," someone said. Alcyonius couldn't quite catch that voice.

"Word is that you've already met with their envoy," Lanthasmus said.

Alcyonius drew a folded paper from his belt. "I bear orders from the Warmaster, signed by the Minister of the Common Weal, and passed to me by our chieftain. I know that Leleb passed those orders on to you. The Sangheili who have accepted the cease-fire are not to be harmed. We must work with them, or leave them to their defenses. That is the Warmaster's orders. So long as they remain useful, they shall not be harmed. Those are my orders."

"We don't need them!" another officer roared as he whirled around to face Alcyonius. It was Major Jhetus, chief officer of the jump-raiders. Under his leadership, the raiders had evolved from a cadre of scouts to the hardest hitting, fastest moving element of the Legion. And yet the more battle honors they racked up, the less scouting they did.

Jhetus stood with his chin high and an arrogant smile on his face. He had a mauler in his hand, and it was pointed right at the Captain-Major.

"You," Alcyonius breathed. "You're the one who's coming after me?"

"When incompetence or cowardice of the commander threatens the life of the Legion," Jhetus bellowed, quoting Tartarus. "It is the duty of the commanded to take destiny into their own hands!"

"For the sake of the Departed, Jhetus, you're a _Major_. You couldn't make the leap to commanding the Legion even with jump packs."

A ripple of laughter rolled around the map table. Even Captain-Minor Lanthasmus chuckled, but Alcyonius barely noticed. In his mind's eye, he could see how this all went down.

Jhetus was ambitious and headstrong, and he'd had his eyes on Alcyonius's back ever since his brother had tried to seize Alcyonius's position and died in the attempt. He must have seen his chance when Alcyonius had ordered a ceasefire. He'd jumped here, bypassing the crowds that slowed the First Maniple, and rallied support for his cause when the officers gathered here.

Captain-Minor Lanthasmus threw his support in early. He was prideful, and surely he nursed a grudge from being ordered crawl back to the line after he'd strayed. What's more, he had little loyalty to Alcyonius. They were not from the same tribe, and Lanthasmus only served Alcyonius because his maniple had been folded into the Ninth Dragoon Legion after the rest of his tribe's legion had been pinned down and eradicated by nuclear artillery. To Lanthasmus, serving Jhetus was just as good as serving Alcyonius.

Captain-Minor Pheristus too would have wanted this from the very beginning. He was as prideful as Lanthasmus, and he had long since fallen out of Alcyonius's favor. After his chastisement today, he must have feared that the commander would demote him and hand the Third Maniple over to someone else. But Pheristus was a contrarian with the flair for the dramatic. He would have loudly argued against removing the commander at first, and then let himself be talked over to Jhetus's side.

The rest of the officers were fence-sitters of the worst kind. They wouldn't even tell Jhetus to get his head out of the clouds and swallow his ambition for another day. Not because they loathed their commander, or because they didn't care who commanded the Legion. No, they were ideologues, suckled as young men on Tartarus's poisonous philosophy. They were testing him. They were propping up Jhetus to see Alcyonius smack him down.

Alcyonius felt his frustration slowly give way to anger. He had waded through a small legion of Sangheili warriors that morning, and the blood of the Fieldmaster still stained his fur. It wasn't enough. It was never enough. Time and time again they made him prove himself only to challenge his authority the next day.

"Damn it, if no one else will stand up to you, I must!" Jhetus roared. "You've brought a Sangheili here, with two elite assassins posing as his bodyguards. Have you taken leave of your senses?"

"We need the Sangheili. Loath as I am to work with the heretics, we need their guns to deny the Parasite, or we'll all be taken."

"No, we'll fall to the Flood when the Sangheili betray us, and you would bare our backs to them!" Jhetus swept the room with his left hand and beckoned to the officers standing beside him.

"We. Need. Their. Guns," Alcyonius hissed through gritted teeth. "I'm hearing a lot of blather, and no plan for how to hold off the Parasite with no air defenses."

"We need the guns?" Jhetus retorted. He made a fist, as if crushing a grassfruit. "Then I say let us take them! Kill the Sangheili, or drive them off. Let them go cower in shelter with their women and whelps!"

"How you expect to take flak weapons from their crews, intact, is beyond me, Jhetus. You would kill the Sangheili or drive them off, but not parlay with them as you have been ordered?"

"I've fought them! I know they have no stomach for a true fight. And if the Warmaster thinks-"

"Damn you, Jhetus," Alcyonius roared. "I've trained you as a warrior as best I could, and here you are, revolting the first time you receive orders you don't like! _Orders flow and men follow!_ Are you a man, or a _Sangheili?"_

"I am-" Jhetus said, but that was as far as he got.

Jhetus was from the Othric tribe, from the inland seas of Moesia. Alcyonius knew that tribe well. The men were hot-headed idiots, and they spoke with their hands as much as their mouths. Jhetus had done another one of those sweeping gestures, but this time he'd done it with the hand that held the mauler.

As soon as the gun was pointed away from Alcyonius, he yanked a spike grenade from his belt and threw it underhand at the usurper. It wasn't primed, but the Major didn't know that, and he was forced to duck.

Alcyonius pounced. With a roar, he sprinted the last few strides that separated him from his prey. Jhetus recovered and raised his mauler, but Alcyonius batted it aside with the flat of his hatchet. The bayonet sliced his hand open and a wild shot grazed his arm, but close counted for nothing in hand-to-hand.

The report of the gunshot was echoed by the impact of flesh and bone against armor weave as the Captain-Major put the momentum of his charge into a right-handed punch to Jhetus's shoulder that spun the officer around.

The attack didn't end there. Alcyonius kept the initiative, striking the usurper's shoulders and neck with fists and elbows. Jhetus was a head shorter than his commanding officer, and scrawny as well. That was all the better for a warrior who threw himself about the battlefield with jump-packs, but he was physically outmatched. Jhetus was an idiot for letting the larger Jiralhanae close the distance.

The flip side of the coin was that Jhetus was used to sparring with larger opponents, and he knew how to take a beating. He threw blocks to spoil Alcyonius's strikes and squirmed around for a clean shot. The gun barked four times before Alcyonius got his hand around it and dropped the magazine. The first flew wild, the second glanced off his hip, and the last two cut into the armor plate over his gut. Even though the plate stopped the shot, the double-impact rocked his whole body.

The bloodrage sang in his ears, poisoned sour and harsh from his frustration. If the Captain-Major let it take him, he knew he would tear Jhetus limb from limb or die trying. So he fought it.

He needed the daft bastard alive. He couldn't spare any warriors for the fight ahead.

He struck Jhetus again in the shoulder, and then caught his wrist again, knocking the mauler to the ground. When the Major twisted to break free, Alcyonius took him by the hardpoint on his cuirass, where a jump pack was supposed to be mounted, and slugged the usurper upside the head. The blow stunned him only momentarily, but at least it cut off whatever ramblings he was screaming. Something about Alcyonius being a kept pet for the heretic Sangheili.

In that moment of weakness, the Captain-Major lifted his errant scout overhead by the hardpoint, and then slammed him facedown onto the map table. The table rocked and the floorboards groaned, and the holographic map fuzzed over and winked out. Alcyonius wasn't worried. He'd had the table designed and built to withstand precisely this kind of abuse, after the fourth time an underling had tried to overthrow him.

Jhetus's cry of pain climbed a few octaves as Alcyonius snaked his arm around Jhetus's and locked it behind his back. Then it cut out completely as Alcyonius cupped his free hand over the usurper's mouth.

He tried to break free, but his muffled screams and futile struggling only brought a smile to everyone's face. Alcyonius had him exactly where he wanted him. Jhetus looked less like the upcoming leader of the legion, and more like a little boy getting picked on by his older brother.

Alcyonius dug his thumb into the usurper's cheek, provoking another bout of muffled screams. He jabbed him again and again, and when he'd had enough, he released Jhetus and threw him to the floor. The Major tumbled, rolled to his feet, and clasped a hand to his bleeding cheek.

"What was that for?" he sputtered.

"I was feeling for four jaws under a mask."

The officers gathered around the table erupted into laughter. All of the steel went out of Jhetus's spine as he realized just how badly he'd come out of the fight. An usurper could bounce back from defeat, if his commander was merciful, but not from humiliation. He could transfer to another Legion or throw his lot in with the Vulgalis, but the story of this fight would follow him to his grave.

"Get back in line," Alcyonius snarled. "The next time you speak out of turn will be your last."

Then he turned to deal with the others.

The Captain-Major scooped up his hatchet and the mauler and slammed both of them blade-first into the tabletop. The double-clang brought an end to the laughter, but his officers still regarded him with easy smiles and a certain look in the eye. That look wasn't subservience, and it wasn't adoration either. It certainly wasn't respect.

It was a look of amusement and defiance, like adolescents who thought they knew too much to learn from their elders. He'd bought their loyalty for another day, if that.

The smiles slowly disappeared as the officers saw the look on his face.

That's all it ever was, just one test after another, each one more pointless than the last. It would never buy their loyalty, because the loyal don't rise in Tartarus's army. The strong and the skilled slew each other for the top spot, and the ambitious and envious rose to take their place.

It was a wonder that the Jiralhanae had come this far without turning on each other.

"No," the Captain-Major said. "This ends now."

He picked up the discarded ammunition drum, slotted it into the mauler, and spun it to index a charged cell.

"I've tried to lead you lot the best I could. I've reasoned with you, I've pleaded with you, I've charged headlong into battle to pull your asses out of the fire, and return you all spit in my face. You asked me to treat you as I would my own kin, and then you stand aside while that _idiot_ tries to replace me. Have you no shame?"

"It is the right of the commanded to-" Captain Brochus said, quoting one of Tartarus's aphorisms. He didn't even get to the end of the sentence before Alcyonius felt something snap in the back of his mind.

"Don't you dare quote Tartarus at me!" he roared, loud enough to shake dust from the ceiling. "Things have changed. Get that through your thick skulls. The Parasite is coming! I have been ordered to hold the line, and I can't do that if you gibbering idiots keep stabbing me in the back! We aren't fighting the Sangheili anymore. We're fighting the Flood. Things have changed. If you can't see that, _you_ are the problem Tartarus was talking about!"

"But we can't trust the Sangheili," Lanthasmus interjected.

" _I_ can't trust _you!_ Should I cut you down and replace you with someone I can?"

"But how-"

"How do you expect to hold back the tide without air defenses? How do you expect to reposition without dropships? How do you expect me to lead if _I'm constantly hamstrung by your petty games?_ You damned idiots are wasting my time _fighting for nothing!"_

"The feud with the Sangheili is well over a thousand years old," said Brochus, this time only paraphrasing what Tartarus had said. "Even if we were to lay down our grievances, they won't."

"You will do it because you have to. You don't have a choice. I don't have a choice. If we fail here today, and if Tartarus fails to channel the Halo's holy light, then tomorrow the sun will rise on a world without the Legion. We will be gone, consumed by the Parasite, and not even the memory of us will remain. Everything you idiots have bickered over will have been cast into oblivion. Do you understand?"

Nobody else dared speak. Even the communications technicians stared at him in silence.

"This is it," Alcyonius said. "From here on out, an order is an order, and you all will follow it or die trying. If the Sangheili betray us, then I shall give the word, and you all will tear their throats out with your teeth. But until then, you will work with them. The next one of you to cross me will be strung up by his manhood and staked out as bait for the Parasite. My word is final. Now swear it!"

Silence reigned in the headquarters. The Captain-Major stared down his officers until Pheristus bowed to his knees and chanted "I pledge my loyalty to you as my Alpha, Alcyonius Aristóchyr Magni."

He was followed by Brochus, and Gognatisus, and finally even Lanthasmus submitted himself. Alcyonius had broken their will to his own, if only for another day. He was tempted to pull a knife and make them swear blood, but such rituals were reviled by the younger generation. A warrior's word, so said Tartarus and his ilk, was promise enough.

"Call in the envoy," he ordered. "And tell Captain-Minor Titopicus to report in as well. Let's get to work."

* * *

 **Midday Period, Headquarters of the Ninth Dragoon Legion of Ushar-Kho**

The situation, as presented by the map table, was hopeless.

The city that sheathed the Unbreakable Spine was ancient, with streets and buildings built on top of one another. The foundation itself was honeycombed with warrens and old infrastructure, most of it so ancient that the maps had been lost to the maw of entropy.

He ordered blocks of buildings to be knocked down and roads to be blocked with shield barricades and mines. Overlapping defensive positions were ordered to be built and manned, so that any incursion would be caught on three sides and destroyed. Lehe 'Osodnee even made good contributions. With Lanthasmus, he plotted multiple firing positions for his anti-aircraft artillery, each connected to the next by cleared lanes. The launcher carriages would have an unobstructed command of the skies, with the freedom to evade counter-battery fire.

This defense, Alcyonius knew, would break Humans and heretic alike. But the Parasite was insidious. Even as it hammered the terrace, it would infiltrate the territory from above, below, or simply by staying out of sight. It would open up little salients, expand them, and then exploit the confusion to overwhelm the defenders.

It was said that the Parasite was coordinated by a wrathful intelligence that had devoured the greatest military minds of a bygone era. What they knew, it remembered. Even if Alcyonius was an expert in counter-infiltration tactics, he would be outmatched. And he wasn't.

This sort of battle would be better fought by a veteran of the Siege of Perdition, where the rear lines had to be constantly defended from Human infiltrators and vermin, and the fighting took place in the ruined halls of alien arcologies. The Humans even infiltrated the Covenant battlenet and sowed confusion with captured communication equipment.

With a start, he realized that the Flood could doubtlessly do the same.

"Leleb," he asked. "How did the Legions secure their communications on Perdition?"

The adjutant looked up from his unit, and his eyes widened in horror as he followed his commander's line of thought. "All of the radio operators developed passphrases and double-speak codes. We don't have time to set that up."

"Make the time," Alcyonius ordered. "Now!"

"What if the Parasite takes a radio operator?" Lehe asked. "It will tear the knowledge from the poor wretch's mind."

"We have Kig-Yar mercenaries. Brochus, I want you to break up a phalanx and assign mercenaries to guard each operator. If they're in danger of capture, the mercenary is to kill the operator and destroy the head."

"A worthwhile precaution," the Sangheili mused. "I shall pass word on to my commander and have him do the same."

"Captain-Major!" a Kig-Yar technician cried from the half-ring of comm booths. "A priority message! From the Warmaster!"

Alcyonius's heart sank. He was beginning to dread these communiques. The last time he'd heard from the Warmaster, he'd been ordered to make peace with the Sangheili. What could it be now?

Leleb loped up to read over the Kig-Yar's shoulder, and then he danced with excitement. "We're saved! We're saved! Tartarus has woken the Holy Ring!"

"What?" Alcyonius demanded, and he was echoed by everyone else around the table. All at once, it felt like a great burden had been lifted from his shoulders.

"Captain-Major," the Kig-Yar said, talking over Leleb. "The Warmaster is broadcasting the sensor feed from his flagship. I can see the Light!"

"Transfer it to the map table, so that we all can see!"

Leleb downloaded the signal register to a cassette, scuttled over to the table, and did his magic. The map dissolved into static like foam on a stormy sea, and then clarified. Halo, holy Halo hung above their heads, a perfectly sculpted ring of metal and water and stone. It was as Alcyonius had seen it this very morning, when High Charity ventured into this star system, but now it was more.

The Sacred Ring was alive now. At its heart was a nebula of holy light, the substance that the Prophets had spoken of for ages. That light was wisdom made manifest, the collected knowledge of sages and scholar-scientists who had peered into the foundations of the universe and beheld eternal, universal truth.

Very soon, that wisdom would be broadcast throughout the galaxy. Each ring would sing one of the harmonic virtues, and all that resonated to those notes would be sanctified and enlightened. All else would be burned away.

All around the table, warriors and technicians cried out in awe. Lehe 'Osodnee bowed his head and raised his arms, and with his bodyguards he chanted a litany of praise to the First Saints. Alcyonius's officers dropped to their knees and swore a host of oaths of gratitude and allegiance to Tartarus and the Hierarchs.

That wouldn't do. It was a racket, not proper worship.

From his belt, Alcyonius took a bag and upended it on the table. Disks of metal and stone spilled forth, like coins.

"This is how we honor our faith," he shouted. "This is how we honor Those Who Walked the Path, and the First Saints who authored the Writ of Union!"

He placed a finger on a disk of fractured obsidian and pushed it across the table to the image of Halo.

"Abandonment," he cried. "The First Age of ignorance and fear!"

He placed his finger on a disk of wrought iron and pushed it to the center of the table.

"Conflict. The Second Age of rivalry and bloodshed!"

The third disk was a disk of polished jade, with two scarlet inclusions at its heart.

"Reconciliation," he cried, and this time some of his officers joined in the ritual. "The Third Age of humility and brotherhood!"

The next disk was a cross-section of a geode.

"Discovery! The Fourth Age of wonder and understanding!"

The fifth disk was a polished slab of gneiss.

"Conversion," he cried, and this time he was echoed by everyone around the table. "The Fifth Age of obedience and freedom!"

The sixth disk was a weathered chip of fossilized wood.

"Doubt," he cried, and now everyone in the room chanted with him. "Sixth Age of faith and patience!"

The final disk was a chip of Forerunner alloy, the smallest of the set and the most dear. Alcyonius placed his palm upon the disk and reverently pushed it to join the rest at the center of the table.

"Reclamation," they cried as one, and the sound of their devotion filled the auction house. "The Seventh Age! Journey and salvation!"

"Seven rings for seven ages!" Alcyonius shouted. "Seven rings for seven virtues. Praise be to the Prophets who led us here! Praise be to the First Saints, and to all the martyrs throughout the ages! Praise be to the Forerunner, who, with their knowledge and their will, forged the Sacred Rings and made possible the Great Journey!"

Just as he finished the Progression of the Ages, one final mote of light rose up from the surface of Halo. As he saw it climb, Alcyonius knew that this was the end of his mortal life, and the beginning of something greater. He was in awe, and he was terrified.

The holy light collapsed into a point like a newborn star, and then it burst into a luminous cloud. Before his eyes, the light faded away.

None dared move. None dared breathe. Even the comm stations had gone silent. All eyes were transfixed upon the image of Halo.

It was a long moment before Lanthasmus asked "What happened?"

The bottom of Alcyonius's stomach fell out as he realized that nothing had happened. They were still mortal. The Great Journey had been denied to them.

"What happened?" Lehe asked. "Did Tartarus fail?"

"Impossible," Brochus retorted. "Tartarus is the strongest of all of us!"

"We're doomed!" Leleb shouted, smacking himself upside the head as if he'd just had a momentous revelation. "We're damned! One of the Holy Rings was destroyed! The other six can't complete the sequence! The Arbiter has doomed us all!"

"No," Pheristus said. "The Hierarchs swore that the other six would take up the slack!"

The argument continued, but Alcyonius didn't hear it. He gathered the disks back into their bag as confusion and doubt raged in his mind. It felt like the whole world had crumbled around him. Salvation had seemed so immanent, so certain. How could it have failed? What was he to do now?

He didn't know how long he was lost in his thoughts. He was only roused by the sound of someone calling his name.

It was Pheristus. He was gesturing to a hologram of a San'Shyuum minister who was hammering his fists against his throne. " _-by the Arbiter, the Sangheili have attacked the control room and overwhelmed Tartarus. The villain has thrown his hand in with the Humans! He has withdrawn the Index from its rightful place, and condemned us all to-"_

Alcyonius's officers cried out in anguish and anger.

" _-no mistake about the magnitude of his crimes. In our moment of need, he has denied us salvation and spread blasphemy and discord-"_

The loudest was Jhetus. He rounded upon the Sangheili, who closed ranks. "You damned clawfaced cretins! You planned this! You knew it was coming! We should have slain you the moment you walked through that door."

Then he turned upon his commander, screaming to be heard over the other officers. "And damn you for-"

Alcyonius ripped the mauler off the table, shoved it in Jhetus's face, and blew his head off. The double-thunderclap of the gunshot and Jhetus's corpse hitting the ground shocked everyone into silence.

"If I wanted your opinion, Jhetus, I would have asked for it."

The silence lasted for a few blessed moments, but not much longer. Lanthasmus was the first to pounce. "Trait-"

Alcyonius trained the gun on him. "Are you next?"

The Captain-Minor choked on his words, but his eyes were still defiant.

"You still shield them?" Topicus asked. "Even after-"

" _This changes nothing!"_ Alcyonius roared, and he instantly thought better of those words. In a quiet voice, he murmured "No. This changes everything."

He rounded upon Lehe, whose bodyguards had taken up defensive positions but not yet drawn their blades. "When I first spoke to you, our only hope was that Tartarus would summon the holy light and vanquish the Parasite. Those hopes are dead. Now we fight because we must, and in the thin hope that someone up there will pull their head out of their ass and restart the activation sequence."

"Indeed," Lehe said softly.

"I don't know what game the Arbiter is playing at. Frankly, I don't care. The question is, what are you going to do? Are you going to fight and follow my orders, or was the late Major Jhetus not enough of an example for you?"

"I will fight as you order, to save what remains of this city. So shall my Fieldmaster," Lehe swore. They were just words, but Alcyonius thought he heard the ring of conviction behind them. "I am appalled at what the Arbiter and his cohorts have done! The crime for which he was marked pales in comparison to this senseless atrocity!"

"Fine," Alcyonius said. "Leleb, get me back my map! The rest of you, get back to work!"

Brochus quoted a proverb about how none knew the day when the Great Journey would begin, or where its first step would be taken, but it fell on deaf ears. The Captain-Major tried to immerse himself in plans and strategies, but his heart wasn't in it.

The memory of the firebreak weighed heavily on his mind. In his mind's eye, he could see that mass of burning metal that would not hold back the Parasite. That immortal enemy would break through, and then Alcyonius would die, his legend unremembered. There would be no last-minute intercession from the gods' divine instrument, he knew that now. No one could save him but himself.

And the only other thing he could think of was the highways that wound their way back to the Spires of Gifting.

Perhaps salvation lay in that direction.

* * *

 **A/N: Day by day, it gets harder to come up with names that don't sound like I ripped them out of Destiny. =P**

 **This and the previous chapter were one of those difficult scenes that took multiple revisions before they really clicked. I think I rewrote that first scene where Alcyonius meets Lehe three or four times, and the confrontation between Alcyonius and his officers required at least as many rewrites. Special thanks for this chapter go out to Xeno Major and Dovahkiin of Spacebattles. Both of them gave key feedback that made my ideas work.**


	9. With Tooth and Claw

_**Ah. Eayn. The trouble with our homeworld is the Kig Yar who live there. They've given up the marshes for crowded cities and sterile space stations. They live long, dull, uninteresting lives. Half of them don't even remember how to fight with tooth and claw.**_

 _ **The Kig Yar species are the most ferocious survivors to crawl out of the primordial muck. And it's my job to remind them of that fact.**_

 **Chur'R-Sul, Mercenary Commander, Generalissimo of the 56 Dasim of Eayn Dragoons.**

* * *

 **Evening Period, Feifdom Port of the Umtalla Family**

"The line's longer," Taol whispered as she peeked through the hedge. "There wasn't this many cargo sleds the last time I came through."

"No?" Nak replied as he peeked over the hedge. Taol snatched him by the collar and dragged him down.

"Don't," she muttered. "You'll silhouette yourself. Peer through."

Nak wasn't sure what the difference was, but she was a war veteran and he was just an engine chief. He parted the hedge, wincing at the sound the needles made as the branches scraped each other, and studied the queue of sleds waiting to carry a load of loot to the docks. Most of all, he studied the warehouse, from which he could hear the shouts of Brutes.

"Those will do," he whispered to Taol.

"Good," she said. "Because those are the only choice we have."

It was true. He'd hoped to find some cargo sleds abandoned on the streets, and therefore avoid confrontation with the Brutes. But it seemed that the Jiralhanae had taken all the floating stock that hadn't been wrecked in the fighting. The only thing to do was steal some back.

Nak wasn't a fighter. He was just an old sailor, ancient by some counts. There was a time when he could hold his own in a backalley scrap, but that was decades ago against dockyard thugs. The Jirals were bigger, faster, stronger, and they had guns. Nak hadn't realized how much he feared them until he stepped back into the streets of the Umtalla docks, leaving the shelter of the Harbormaster's office behind.

He wasn't alone. Dith and Kess were huddled in a corner, the former showing the latter the basics of Keelworker handsign. Kess looked sick to his stomach, and Nak wondered how many more signs the deckhand's head could take before they leaked out of his earholes.

Pem, the other keelworker, was pacing nervously, turning a gold-and-purple coin around in his hands.

But Taol… she looked like she always did, serene as a holy man. He'd never seen her angry or fearful, and the only clue he had to what was going on behind her eyes was that she wasn't cracking jokes anymore. He'd heard stories about her, and he'd never known what to make of her cool detachment. Now, Nak was starting to fear her too.

Taol called them to the middle of the garden, dropped to her haunches, and scratched a map in the dirt. "There's seven sleds in the queue. We'll take the last three. I'll go secure them, and when I'm done I'll signal you to break cover and get the sleds going. Nak, you and Pem get number seven. Kess, you pilot number six, and follow me back to the Harbormaster's office. Dith, you're with me."

"What signal?" Pem asked.

Taol took a light out of her vest, turned it on, and waved her hand in front of it three times. "If I scream, run back to the Harbormaster's office."

"Right. Scream," Kess repeated, and Nak wondered how well the lad would do on his own. It didn't help that he was staring wildly about the garden as if he expected a Brute-Pack to storm over the hedges. Which was unlikely. The Jiralhanae had turned this garden into a latrine, and anyone who stormed through the hedges would have something else on their mind.

"When you break cover, act casual," Taol said.

"Casual?" Dith asked hoarsely, as if she'd just told them to sprout feathers and fly.

"Casual," she said. "Don't run. Walk. Walk like you do when your meal break is over. It's easier to spot a bunch of strangers skulking about than it is to see people being where they're supposed to be."

That made a certain lopsided sense to Nak, so he clicked his beak and said "We can do that. What about the drivers?"

The knives under Taol's vest clinked as she stood.

"I'm going to have a talk with them," she said.

Then she slung three musette bags over her shoulder and strode out of the garden.

* * *

A pall of smoke hung heavy in the evening air, giving strange auras to the lights in the street. That smoke carried scents of the battle from this morning, scents that threatened to stir up old memories. Burnt synthetics. Burnt fur. Burnt flesh.

The Sangheili said that war is a crucible that brought forth the best and the worst of people. Taol's crucible had been a world named Bath'tet, and she had emerged like…

... Like a clay pot, fired wrong in the kiln, cracked all the way through and held together only by friction and the memory of the shape it was supposed to be. Like a dropship, crippled by rockets and airborne only by the grace of inertia.

She had to stop and gather her wits.

Taol reminded herself that she lived in the present. She was on High Charity, not Bath'tet, and however nightmarish the day had been, it didn't hold a candle to the time she'd spent trapped in a Human refinery-city, lost in enemy territory.

" _Chupwuesa m'thak lhuk thol?"_ a voice asked. It snapped Taol out of her reverie. She looked around, and then up. She had wandered in front of one of the traction sleds. The Unggoy driver had stepped out of the cab and was looking down at her.

" _Chupwuesa m'thakti lhuk won uthol?"_ he asked again.

"I don't speak Jiral," Taol replied in Sangheili.

The driver shrugged.

"Ach. Recruit," he said with a thick accent that Taol couldn't place. "Pressed into service by the big boys, heh? What are you wandering around for? You're not making a run for it, are you? What we do to the Sangheili is nothing compared to what we do to runaway slaves."

"I'm not wandering," Taol said, and she held up a musette bag. "I'm delivering rations. But you don't sound all that hungry."

The Unggoy's eyes gleamed with joy, and he pounded a fist against the cab's canopy. "Ah, ah! No! I'm starving! Come up here and let's see what you've got!"

"Yeah. Sure. Just help a girl out here," Taol said as she climbed up into the cab and took a quick look around. The cargo sled was a two-seater, but only the driver had a proper seat with arms and a headrest. There was only a flat bench for the passenger. "I'm new here. The Fist press-ganged me and my crew this morning, and next thing I know I'm working for the quartermaster. I don't know any names."

The Unggoy rolled in his seat to settle himself, and then tapped his fingers against the steering levers. "First thing you need to know is, the Fist is dead. The heretics got him this morning, and that's a pity. He was great! You should have seen him cut through those claw-faced bastards this morning. I saw grown Sangheili men flee for their lives!"

"Oh?" Taol asked.

"Yeah. Shame. All his officers are scrambling for the top spot, but we all know Machatlus is going to come out on top. Ah, forget it. It's over our heads. And you wound up with the quartermaster? That's Lothus, and he's not bad. You could have done worse."

"Hmm?" Taol muttered.

"Yeah. You could have wound up with one of the warriors. I guess there's a bunch of barges coming up the spire. All the warriors are converging on the highway, spoiling for another fight. And it might be the nasty kind of fight where the other guy can shoot back." The driver shivered. "You're better off with Lothus."

"What about him?" Taol asked, pointing toward the warehouse.

"Major Dorsus," the driver muttered, and he took a deep breath from his mask. "Just between you and me, he's an idiot. Really. See how long the line is? I've been sitting here long enough to take a nap, and I could take another before it's my turn to load up! What's he doing in there that's taking so long?"

"Thanks," Taol said as she tossed one of the musette bags to the Unggoy. He caught the bag and greedily tore it open. "That's all I need to know."

In one smooth motion, Taol pulled a knife from her vest and plunged it into the soft skin below the base of the Unggoy's skull. The Unggoy jerked as if from an electric shock, but she grabbed his rebreather harness for leverage and sawed through the keratin sheath around his spinal cord. It was over quick. It wasn't a clean death, but her victim went without even a squeak of protest. The bag slid out of his hands and flopped onto the floor.

Taol listened, concerned that someone might have overheard her, or that a sentry might wander by on patrol. She knew that her crewmates thought she was fearless, but that wasn't entirely true.

But nobody wandered by, and nobody called out in alarm.

She shut down the driver's rebreather, sealed the valves, and locked him in place with the seat's restraints. Then she set the parking brake and leaped down from the cab.

As she advanced to the next sled, she turned the Unggoy's words over in her head. He had said that the Jirals were gathering at the highway to greet some barges, the same barges that Heik had seen rising up the spire. Who was coming? If refugees, the Jirals were about to capture more slaves than they knew what to do with, and if it was a Sangheili attack, the dock was about to become a live warzone. Either way, Taol knew she had to hurry. They all did.

The next driver was dozing in his seat when Taol climbed into the cab, and barely had time to stir before she stabbed a knife into his neck. Right through the nerve bundle, like she'd seen Human commandos do. She restrained him, set the parking brake, and moved on.

She wasn't so lucky on the third sled. The driver was awake, and hailed her with a " _Nak'hish bayurnut perlit?"_

"I don't speak Jiral," Taol replied.

The driver regarded her warily. "Who are you?"

"I'm a sailor," Taol said as she climbed into the cab. "The Fist impressed my crew this morning, and now Lothus sent me out to deliver rations."

"Ah. You're-" The Unggoy stopped mid-sentence, and his gaze dropped to her beltline. Taol glanced down and saw a trail of luminous blue blood spattered on her vest.

The Unggoy's eyes rose to meet hers, and widened in horror. He started to hyperventilate.

Taol lunged. The Unggoy threw an arm to block her, but she caught his forearm in her mouth and sank her teeth through the hard flesh and didn't let go. She also planted her right hand against the Unggoy's gas mask and dug her claws into his face for purchase. He screamed so hard it bubbled through the seal around his mouth, but with her palm pressed firmly against the voicepiece, what little sound emerged hardly sounded like a scream at all.

Then, with her free hand, she dug the tip of a knife into his throat and shoved it in as far as it would go.

The driver shuddered in pain and tried to rise from his seat. He was stronger and bulkier than Taol and he would have succeeded, but he was already weak from blood loss and his inability to draw a breath. She kept him pinned down until he choked to death on his own blood, and she saw the light fade from his eyes.

Taol was reminded of her first kill, her first true kill, when she was shot down behind enemy lines on Bath'tet, naked and alone. She'd ambushed a Human and tore his throat out with her teeth so that she could take his rifle. That had been just the first day of a long nightmare, one that clung to her long after she left that blasted world behind.

She'd relived those memories so many times that they meant nothing to her, but they were hard to escape. If she got sucked in, she could spend hours wandering around in them, like a nocturnal insect fluttering around a light.

But she was on High Charity. Not Bath'tet.

She listened, but she heard nothing. So she signaled the others and shoved the dead body onto the passenger bench. The sled's controls were standard for a heavy vehicle, and she quickly familiarized herself.

It was a long time before the others reached their cargo sleds, and each moment stretched into eternity. At long last, she saw them in the rearview frame, and Dith climbed up into the cab.

"What's that-" he asked, before catching sight of the dead driver. He looked from the Unggoy to Taol and the bloodstained seat and back.

"What happened?" he whispered.

"He wouldn't come quietly," Taol said, wiping the blood from her chin. "Tell the others to follow me out."

"What about that?" Dith asked, pointing to the corpse that still had a knife in its throat. "What do we do with _that?"_

"Leave it. We'll hide the body when we're out of sight."

A loud commotion rang out and echoed down the street, unmistakably the thud-clank of an Unggoy and rebreather harness being thrown from Nak's sled into the street below. Moments later came a second thud-clank as Pem threw out his corpse as well.

"We're leaving. Now!" Taol snarled as she throttled the engine to full and whipped the vehicle through a U-turn.

In the rearview frame, she saw Unggoy and Brutes spilling out of the warehouse, before her view was blocked as Nak and then Kess brought their sleds around to follow her.

"Idiots," she hissed. "They're on the alert."

"Shit!" Dith cursed from his perch on the running board. "What do we do?"

"We head back to the Harbormaster's office," Taol said. "Stick to the plan. It's the only thing we can do."

* * *

 **Evening Period, Umtalla Family Warehouse District**

A hail of red-hot spikes hammered into the wall above, too close for comfort. Quatch shoved Bon behind cover and dove after him.

More projectiles sailed through the ruined storefront. Plasma bolts and spikes ripped through counters and display stands and whatever else the looters had passed over. Quatch had led the others here, hoping to escape to the alley out back or the street beyond, maybe even lose their pursuers. Now it looked like the store would be their grave.

The trouble was Bon. The he had had come this far on the fright-and-flight instinct, but now he was slipping into shock. He could barely stand up, let alone run.

The old keelworker curled up around his injured arm, as if he was waiting to die.

There was a lull in the shooting, and the Kig Yar soldier, the one that had spared Heik and helped carry off the hostage, jumped over the counter and landed beside Quatch.

"They want the Sangheili whelp!" she shouted over the sound of exploding furniture.

"I know!"

"Machatlus is pissed! He's sending out search teams for us!"

"What?"

"Machatlus. He's the new Alpha, or he will be, sure as sure!"

That made even less sense, until Quatch saw the comm pad on the mercenary's arm and realized that she was still in the loop. She was overhearing this Machatlus's orders.

"You can hear them? What are, no, how many search teams?"

"All the soldiers that he can spare. There's a big fight that's about to happen, against the Sangheili or something worse. He wants his rear secure and Lothus is screaming something about Sangheili raiders in the warehouses."

"Warehouses," Quatch muttered. He hoped that wasn't Taol.

The gunfire had slowed to a trickle, which made him nervous. His fears were fulfilled when he heard the clink of grenades and the whoosh of a spreading puddle of fire. He saw pillars of flame licking the ceiling, and out of his other eye he saw Heik and the Sangheili race through the doorway to the back end of the store.

"Go," he said to the soldier. "Get Bon out of here! Follow Heik!"

"He's a cripple! We should leave him!"

"I wish I could, but I can't! I need him!"

She hissed something unprintable, lifted Bon in a fireman's carry, and ran for the exit. If the Brutes had meant to flush them out with the grenades, it had backfired. Between the sheets of flame and the smoke, she had plenty of cover for her escape.

Quatch could have followed, but he heard troops advancing through the store. He heard the clop-clop of Unggoy, and the footfalls of something heavier, so he lifted the longarm spiker to his shoulder and waited.

A Brute vaulted over the counter and barely had time to notice Quatch before the boatswain shot him through the chest. The Unggoy panicked and opened fire in every which direction, which gave him the opportunity to steal a fire grenade from the Brute's belt. He primed the grenade and tossed it behind him as he fled through the back of the store.

* * *

 **Evening Period, Offices of Harbormaster Jarl ur 'Umtalla**

Taol parted ways with Nak and Kess when they reached the Harbormaster's office. She turned down a side street and sped for the entrance. Nak and Kess, on the other hand, slowed down and parked long enough for the crew to break cover and climb aboard.

"Lan, Tair, Dwe, Cam," Nak counted as they climbed into the bed of the cargo sled. He came up short.

"Where's Bon and Quatch?" Pem asked, echoing Nak's thoughts. "Shouldn't they be back by now?"

"They should," Nak replied. He was braiding as thallit stick as he spoke, because he needed the high and he needed to get the stink of Unggoy blood out of his nostrils. The stuff made his seat sticky, and had already stained his coveralls.

"Should we continue on to the warehouse?" Pem asked.

"We wait here," Nak said. He lit the stick and took a deep breath. "Quatch said he'd meet us here."

With the engine idling, the two could hear gunfire and shouts. This wasn't the sound of distant battle that had been omnipresent since this morning. It was close. This was fighting in the streets of the Umtalla docks, and that knowledge made the old T'vaoan's guts quiver with fear.

A spray of plasma bolts erupted from an alley down the street. Moments later, four figures spilled out of the alley; a Kig Yar, a Sangheili, and a second Kig Yar dragging a third.

"That's them!" Pem shouted. Nak was already throttling the engines to full and charging down the street. He coasted, and then braked long enough for the others to climb in back.

More plasma fire poured out of the alley, and a fourth Kig Yar fled into the street, a longarm weapon held over his head. Nak hissed in alarm and stepped on the gas.

"Wait, that's Quatch!" Pem shouted. Sure enough, the Kig Yar was wearing the orange vest of the _Libation's_ bridge crew. Nak coasted long enough for Pem to haul Quatch onto the running board before taking off.

Unggoy spilled out of the alley as the cargo sled raced by. They spread into a loose firing line and hosed the vehicle down with shots from their plasma pistols, only to be scattered as Kess plowed through them from behind.

"What happened?" Nak asked as the boatswain climbed into the cab.

"We were ambushed," Quatch wheezed. "Remember that Brute who was guarding us on the docks? Atrupus? He was the one guarding the Sangheili. He must have smelled us coming. He nearly killed Bon!"

"Damn," Nak swore as he turned the cargo sled at the intersection of Kaishen Dai street. Too fast. The sled yawed and scraped against a bollard with a clash that everyone in the docks could hear "That's not… _now wait one fish-frying moment_ , who's that _fourth_ Kig-Yar?"

"Yeah, the one with armor?" Pem added.

"I don't know," Quatch said.

" _You don't know?"_

"Heik took her prison- no, _she_ took _Heik_ prisoner and somehow it all got switched around and she's following us now."

"Better find out why," Nak said.

"Does she even have a name?" Pem asked.

"It can wait. We're here," Nak said as he coasted into a parking lot and braked as hard as he could without cutting power to the gravity cushion. The sled came to a stop just shy of the door of Warehouse Twenty-Five.

"I'll open the door, you back this rig inside," Quatch said as he prepared to dismount. His eyes widened as he finally caught sight of the Unggoy blood that was puddled on the floor and smeared on the seat and Nak's coveralls. "What happened here?"

"Taol happened," Nak snarled.

* * *

 **Evening Period, midway up the local Spire of Gifting**

Phantoms and singleships flew up the causeway, the vanguards of another wave of barges. These barges were filled with vehicles and refugees, laden far past their normal operating limits. They were slow and ponderous at the best of times, and now it took all of their pilots' considerable skill just to keep them on course.

Septal 'Rehestuf, sworn custodian of the Admirality Courts, stood at the prow of the foremost barge and peered down the length of the causeway to the Umtalla Port, the furthest dock from the Unbreakable Spine. Through the violet air curtain that surrounded the barge, he saw streaks of green light launch from the port, and his hands clenched around his halberd.

"Anti-aircraft fire!" he pronounced. "The Jiralhanae hold that station. They seek to bar our way!"

That news was ill-received. The Sangheili who stood near him were all citizens. Many had received perfunctory training in the martial arts, but none had ever been trained for battle, and none had ever seen true combat before this day. Septal was ashamed to count himself among their number.

"How many?" someone asked.

"Who can say?" he replied. "If our fortune holds true, our warriors will break through their lines and buy us time to flee. But the time may soon come when they will not be here to protect us, and we must then defend ourselves. Who will stand with me and lay down their lives so that others may live?"

He was met with guilty stares and embarrassed silence. He was surrounded by cowards who had not fought all day, even as the Brutes and then the Parasite destroyed all they knew. They would not fight now, not when escape was so close.

A hand rested on his shoulder, and a stern voice said "No."

It was Ihyera, his aunt, the woman who he had sworn his life to defend.

"Three times this day, you have asked me to release you. First to fight the Jiralhanae, and then to fight the Parasite. Had I granted any of these requests, I and many of your kin would have been lost."

"They are lost already!" Septal snarled. Not lost in battle, but separated by the press of the crowd. Their group had been divided again and again until there was only him and Ihyera.

"But they still have a chance, and so do we!" she retorted. "We were not trapped in the city, as we would have been had you not been there."

"You would have found a way,"

She took his hand. "Each of us has our duty. Yours is to stand by my side wherever my duty takes me, and to defend my life with yours, but _only if you must_. It is not a glorious calling, but it is a good one."

There was a flash of light overhead. An explosion ripped the heart out of a Phantom dropship, turning it into a cloud of dark fragments. Septal barely had time to throw his aunt to the deck and cover her body with his before debris ripped through the air curtain and cut into the throngs of civilians.

"Passengers preserve us!" she shouted, a prayer to the mythical oracles hidden within High Charity, the closest that Septal ever heard her come to uttering heresy.

None of the debris landed near them, but they could hear the cries of the wounded and the dying, and the prayers of those who had been spared. The barge shuddered from the impacts and wavered from its course like a drunkard, but it kept going on.

He lifted Ihyera into a sitting position and stood over her. It was a futile gesture. Any debris that killed him would likely spear through him and kill her too. But duty demanded he stand there, and so he would.

Out of the pleas and the prayers rose a hymn. It started as a faint whisper, as quiet as the sound of the wind that filtered through the air curtain. But then a Deacon lent his augmented voice to the song, and more people heard, and more people joined in.

 _Shon'ai. A god I am not._

 _Like a ship in stormy waters_

 _I stand at the mercy_

 _Of fortune and fate_

 _Come what may, come what must_

 _First Saints, grand me enlightenment._

 _First Saints, show me the way_

 _Let me learn my place_

 _And there I shall stay_

 _Forerunner, Firstborn,_

 _Prepare me a path_

 _I can ask no more._

Septal glanced out over the prow. The Umtalla port was growing near. He could see singleships sweeping the receiving areas with their guns, and troops spilling out of the bellies of dropships. The Brutes were firing back. Plasma bolts and fuel rods streaked after the aircraft, and some were thrown toward the barges.

Either way this ended, Septal knew it would end soon. It was out of his hands.

 _Shon'ai._

* * *

 **A/N: This one took too long to write.**

 **I'd really like to get done with the High Charity arc before the end of May. That's not going to happen, unless I get the same surge of free time and creative drive that I enjoyed this winter.**

 **There's still about three chapters of story left. I hate to sound like I'm counting down the minutes.I love High Charity and I hope to return to it someday and do it justice, but there's so much more I have planned for Quatch and his crew, and I can't wait to get there.**


	10. Passing of the Eye of the Storm

_**And so I, Senior Adjudicator Tenk Nhurm, set my [pen to paper] on the sixteenth cycle [Covenant Holy Calendar] of this hollow new age, full of great joy for my corporeal salvation, and full of infinite sorrow for the unspeakable tragedy that has claimed so many of the faithful. High Charity has fallen, but may the [light of her wisdom] never fade from the Holy Ecumune!**_

 _ **The high courts of our [meta-civilization] are not as they were. Like all the other Ministries, they were crippled by the ravages of the [Parasite]. So few officials from all of the various juridical courts survived the first day of the Great Schism. And as we rebuild, I fear that the most intractable problem we face shall be what to do with the other refugees.**_

 _ **Of the billions who lived upon High Charity, mere millions escaped the [maw] of the Parasite. And let me be clear, there are no heroes among that number. The heroes stood, and they fought, and they were consumed so that the rest may have a chance to flee. But many didn't. What should we do, then, with the deserters and the cowards?**_

 _ **Many of the refugees, to be sure, were helpless civilians. But that does not mean they are innocent. There were many who saw the [great calamity] coming, and took that as a license to loot and plunder, or to 'rescue' holy relics with an eye for personal gain. There were charlatans who cheated the truly innocent of their material wealth, and then left them to the [Great Enemy]. Indeed, what shall be done with them?  
**_

 **-Extract from a legal opinion written by Adjudicator Tenk Nhurm, published January 2553. Roughly translated from the original Liturgical Tongue.**

* * *

 **Midday, Near the Nape of the Unbreakable Spine**

For the third time, Captain-Major Alcyonius watched the Forerunner Dreadnought abandon High Charity.

The hololithic record played in his cupped hands. He could see the skyways fade and the static pylons fall to the ground. Then fire was kindled in the immortal engines, and the great ship slipped free of the moorings that had cradled it for thousands of years. The Dreadnought ascended to the sky above, leaving behind the faithful to their fates.

It was abandonment. It was preservation, both of the most important artefact the Covenant had ever recovered, and of the two Hierarchs who still lived. And it was the final, ultimate confirmation of what Alcyonius already knew. High Charity could not be saved. The Parasite could not be driven back from the territory it had claimed, only denied from expanding one step further.

Clenching his hands into fists, Alcyonius dismissed the hologram and gazed up at the Firebreak. It glowed like the sunset, and yet Scarabs still poured their terrible energies into it. From his perch on the steps of his headquarters, he could see the span of the Firebreak from one horizon to the other. He could see slopes of slag that glowed like coals, and rivers of molten metal that flowed toward the Spine.

The principle was familiar to anyone who had seen a world glassed. Plasma burned hot enough to turn flesh into ash and steam, hot enough to burn away the taint of Human settlement and the corruption of the Parasite. Blocked by a wall of molten slag, the Parasite couldn't possibly push into the Unbreakable Spine.

And yet Alcyonius knew it would come.

He had walked the perimeter and examined the defenses, but his heart wasn't in it. Runners came for him, and he sent them back with orders he'd forgotten moments later. His mind was elsewhere.

If his own warriors wouldn't follow, why should he lead them into battle? If the Hierarchs fled, why should he stay?

It was there that Lehe 'Osodnee found Alcyonius. The envoy of the Quincunx Guards clasped a fist to his chest in salutation and announced "Captain-Major, I stand before you an improved man. Field Master Aritham 'Kandonomee has seen fit to promote me to a Major of the first order, so that I may properly represent him."

Alcyonius said nothing.

"Emblems of my new rank will have to wait until the action has concluded," Lehe said. "In the hours ahead, I shall have to prove myself worthy of my new status, but he wishes you to know that when I speak, I truly speak for him."

"Why?" Alcyonius rumbled. "Because he has granted you a paper promotion? Does he expect that to keep me happy, even though he refuses to meet me face-to-face?"

"He is busy, just as you are!" Lehe protested.

"Where is he?" the Captain-Major asked.

Lehe hesitated.

"Where is he? I'll go see him myself!"

Lehe pointed out over the terrace toward the Firebreak, which Alcyonius knew for a fact was nowhere close to the Fieldmaster's true position. But in spite of himself, he turned to look.

There was a flaw in the Firebreak, a patch where the orange-hot slag dimmed to a dull red, and ceased to glow altogether. This cold spot spread and swelled, rising up from the slopes around it like a festering boil.

Before his eyes, another cold spot appeared, and then another, and then a fourth one over on the horizon.

Alcyonius was reminded of a phenomenon he had seen when he bore witness to the cleansing of a Human colony. In the wake of an excavation beam, spots in the sea of molten glass had suddenly cooled and swelled.

A minor Prophet from the Ministry of Preservation had explained the cold spot as the result of local hydrology. Water from an aquifer had been forced upward by hydraulic pressure. When it reached the surface, it cooled the glass into rock. The trapped water would boil, quickly building pressure until rock and glass alike were suddenly blown away, leaving only a steaming crater.

He opened his mouth to shout a warning, but there was nobody to warn, and a Scarab was already dragging its incandescent beam across that first cold spot.

The cold spot erupted like a geyser, and a torrent of water and steam poured through. One after another, all of the cold spots ruptured. Water flowed down the face of the Firebreak in great rivers and boiled away.

"How?" Alcyonius breathed, not quite believing what his eyes beheld.

"There are great reservoirs deep within High Charity!" Lehe cried. "The Parasite must have drained them and channeled their waters here!"

No sooner had the Sangheili spoken than the torrent suddenly slowed. Things tumbled out of the wells of the cold spots. They were walls of flesh that looked like heart valves, but they must have been the size of canal locks. As soon as they were clear, the torrents redoubled. Now the water that poured down the slopes of the Firebreak was filthy and full of things that looked like polyps and maggots.

Alcyonius had the eye of a trained artilleryman. He realized that, to be seen at this distance, the things that swarmed in the water must be the size of houses.

Sirens rang all across the terrace, calling warriors to their stations to make ready. Artillery cannons opened up. In the last few moments before the clouds of steam completely obscured the Firebreak, Alcyonius saw explosions rip across those hot slopes, and he saw excavation walkers pour their terrible heat directly into the wells. It wasn't enough.

"It's over," Lehe said. "We could have turned back a trickle, but this? How are we to fight this?"

"Hold your tongue! That smacks of defeatism!" one of Alcyonius's officers cried. Alcyonius hadn't even heard the man walk up. "We have the high ground, and the artillery to blunt their offense! We only have to buy time-"

More sirens called out, and dozens of batteries of anti-aircraft weapons opened fire. Needles and actinic plasma bolts from Draugr emplacements and Mantis turrets lanced into the steam clouds, seeking out targets that could not be seen with the naked eye.

At long last, the Parasite revealed itself. Airships and skycars flew out of the clouds by the thousands. Even as their numbers were savaged by the incoming fire, they moved together like a school of fish. The aircraft swarm wheeled about and sped down the Unbreakable Spine, racing for the terrace and the Spires beyond.

A point of pride for Alcyonius was that he always knew what to say before the battle was joined, but now words failed him. He stood at the steps of his headquarters with his comm unit in hand, waiting for inspiration to strike so that he could pass that inspiration on to his warriors.

But there simply were no words.

He gestured for Lehe and the others to follow him, and marched into his headquarters.

* * *

 _ **Evening Period, Warehouse District of the 'Umtalla docks**_

"Why are we here?" P'thon asked as his arm was submitted for identification. "We should flee to the interior hives. My family has estates up there."

"Can't," Quatch replied as the man door unlocked. "Your clan elder told me to get you and any other survivors far away from here. For that, we need a ship, and for that, we need supplies. Now move."

The young Sangheili resisted, but he was outnumbered and hurting badly. It only took a gentle shove to get him through the warehouse's man door. Quatch followed him in and opened the bay door to let the cargo sleds in.

"Supplies and a ship!" P'thon hissed. "You're no better than the Brutes!"

"Stow that!" Quatch said. "I struck a bargain with Kuota-"

An emerald plasma bolt splashed against the doorsill by Quatch's shoulder. Three more sailed into the warehouse, and more riddled the side of Nak's cargo sled.

"Shit!" Quatch snarled. "Get to cover!"

He'd left his longarm spiker in the cab. All he had was the plasma pistol that the late Jiral chieftain had given him. He fell to his knees and snapped off shots one-handed, but he was far out of practice, and all his shots went wild.

Nak and Kess raced their sleds into the warehouse, and Quatch could see a whole lance of Unggoy outside across the street. Some had broken cover and were racing across the yard.

Heik stepped up, raised his plasma repeater, and laid down a long burst of blue energy. He was hardly more accurate than Quatch, but he had the volume of fire to make up for it. Blue plasma bolts swept the yard, sending the enemy scrambling back into cover. The apprentice signalman kept his finger on the trigger for as long as it took both cargo sleds to back into the warehouse. By the time the door clanked shut, waves of heat were rising from the gun, and its fire rate had slowed to a crawl.

"Are they going to force their way inside?" Quatch asked.

"No, they'll set up firing positions and wait for us to leave," the Kig-Yar soldier replied.

"I didn't break this gun, did I?" Heik asked. He was drumming his fingers on the foregrip, the plasma repeater was so hot to hold.

"No, here," the soldier said. "Watch your arm."

She pressed something, and panels on the repeater opened up to vent air hot enough to cook someone's arm to the bone.

"You slide that switch up to vent heat," she said. "Push that flap up to check the vitals. That's seventy six points left on the dial, so you have just over half of the battery left."

"I never got your name," Quatch said. "Who are you?"

"Call me Tur. I'm a Hoplon, junior rating," she replied.

"Alright. Tur. Why are you helping us?"

"Well, shipmaster, you're getting ready to take a ship and leave. I want off this station as soon as possible."

"Oh? Is the fight not going well for the Jirals, then?"

"It's not going well for anybody," she said. "It all started going sour when the High Prophet of Truth announced the recovery of the Sacred Icon. A Demon appeared out of thin air to attack the Hierarchs!"

"A Demon. Like the ones that fight for the Humans?"

"Yes."

"Here?"

" _Yes!_ I saw the broadcast with my own eyes! And then a Human ship bearing a plague from the bowels of the Halo crashed into the Golden City! It's spreading through the station, corrupting everything in its path! And then the Arbiter-"

"Fine," Quatch said. "Heik, get the Sangheili loaded up. Tur, watch the door, scream if they try to break through. Everyone else, hurry up and pick those shelves clean! We're moving out as soon as we can!"

His mind buzzed as he strode over to the racks of hard goods. Plague. A plague was spreading through High Charity? What had the aristocrat said? Something about a _Lamesai Unesh Nok_? How could a plague-

Nak was coming the other way, pushing a dolly loaded with a sidestack reactor and a pile of fuel cells. Quatch stepped out of the way, but Nak caught his arm and dragged him along.

"Well, why is she helping us?"

"I don't know. She babbled a load of nonsense about plagues and demons. I don't think she's leveling with me."

"And you trust her?"

"Trust her? Of course I don't trust her. I just know that she knows what the Jirals will do to her for helping us."

Nak stared at him, unimpressed.

"If she betrays me, I'll shoot her. If not, I'll hand her off to you to make an engine crewer of her. She'll be your problem then."

With that, Quatch shrugged Nak off and went to help the others. They found everything from amalgam to protein feedstock, and every kind of reactor coolant he could think of. He would have taken the whole warehouse if he could, but there wasn't enough room in the cargo sleds. And there wasn't enough time to decide what they needed most.

They had to grab what they could and trust their luck.

* * *

 ** _Evening Period, Offices of Harbormaster Jarl ur 'Umtalla_**

With a heave-ho, Taol and Dith threw the last corpse into the back of the cargo sled. There were only thirty Umtalla officers or so, not as many as she'd hoped for, but it was hard and exhausting work digging the Sangheili out from under the pile of bodies and dragging them over to the sled.

"Let's call it quits," said Sap, who was perched on his haunches as if he were about to lose his lunch.

"Yes. Let's," Taol replied. "You two climb in back and make yourselves comfortable. Dith, get the door."

"Comfortable as shit in a colon," Sap groused as he and Don climbed into the back. "I'm going to have nightmares about this."

"Don't worry," Taol said. "The nightmares lose their sting after the second year."

It wasn't far from the truth. This place was stirring up all kinds of bad memories. She remembered stumbling into streets of Bath'tet where a fight had gone one way or another, leaving scores of her fellow Covenant warriors dead, or piles of Humans in armor or civilian attire. That memory had once filled her with dread if not outright terror. Now, they barely evoked a sense of urgency.

The worst came when she climbed into the driver's seat and Dith opened the double-doors of the Harbormaster's office. She saw lightning flash outside, and the distant thunder of plasma weapons.

For a moment, she was back there. On Bath'tet. Sitting in the gunner seat of a Phantom dropship, staring out across a night sky thick with cannon fire and corkscrewing missiles. There were Humans in the buildings below, fiendishly clever Humans who crept through the shadows with rockets, waiting for her attention to be diverted for just one moment.

Old memories, bad memories. And yet she felt nothing at all about them.

When Dith climbed into the cab, she mistook him for her old pilot, Yis. But only for a moment. She reasserted herself and reminded herself that she was on High Charity, and if fortune favored her, she wouldn't be here much longer.

"Let's go already," Dith said. "The smell is starting to get to me."

"Starting to smell like food, isn't it?" Taol asked.

Dith gave her a pained look.

She threw the sled into gear and pulled into the street outside.

* * *

 _ **Evening Period, Warehouse 25 of the Umtalla Warehouse District**_

"That's it, let's go!" Quatch called as the last drum of reactor coolant was loaded into the sled. "Everyone climb in back and keep your heads down, there will be shooting! Kess, you follow Nak. Do not slow down, and do not stop for anything! If we get separated, meet us at dock three-twenty two."

He climbed into the cab with Nak and readied the longarm spiker. Seated on Nak's other side, Pem readied a holdout pistol he'd scrounged from the Harbormaster's Offices.

Quatch had no idea what was waiting for them outside the warehouse. Their pursuers had time enough to set up barricades, or they could be waiting in the wings with grenades. He told Pem to lay down suppressive fire as soon as the door opened, and he saw Heik climbing into Kess's cab to do the same.

Tur opened the man door long enough to throw a pair of grenades, and then she hit the door release and sprinted for the cargo sleds. Status lights on the warehouse doors flashed blue, and then they slowly began to open.

Thunder and lightning clashed in the skies outside. It took a long moment before Quatch realized it wasn't the grenades going off. He was hearing gunfire and seeing the light of plasma bursts reflected off the bulkhead-sky and filtered through the smoky haze.

There was fighting in the streets. War had come back to the feifdom port of the Umtalla clan.

Then came a hailstorm of spikes and plasma fire. Quatch picked out a Brute half-hidden in cover and fired twice. He didn't see if he hit, but the longarm spiker clicked empty on the third pull. He threw the weapon behind the driver's seat and screamed for Nak to get moving, but the old man was already shifting gears and funneling energy into the sled's drive.

The cargo sled shot from the warehouse like an arrow from a bow and plowed through the crates the Unggoy had stacked there to block the way. There was a moment of terror where the sled felt like it was going to stall. Plasma bolts flew wild in every direction.

And then the sled pushed the last of the crates aside. Nak turned onto Kaisan Dai street and sped for the piers. In every direction came the boom of thunder and the flash of lightning.

* * *

 ** _Midday, Near the Nape of the Unbreakable Spine_**

The Parasite lived up to its name. It washed over Alcyonius's lines like the tide, and it was all that his Legion could do to hold their ground.

The principal problem was that the enemy dominated the airspace. There were simply too many for the air defenses to handle, and for every aircraft that was shot down, another would crash deliberately, or fly low enough to vomit a cargo of corrupted thralls. There was no rear line, no spot of territory that couldn't suddenly be contested.

Alcyonius turned his back to the map table almost as soon as the battle began. Territory was changing hands faster than the sensors and forward observers could update it, and so the picture it painted was dangerously deceptive.

Instead, he prowled the comm deck, listening to the reports as they rolled in. He listened to the signalmen coordinate artillery strikes. He heard Captain-Minor Lanthasmus's death cries as something crashed into his troop carrier, and immediately promoted the second officer to command of the Third Maniple. He then ordered Captain-Minor Pheristus to launch a counterattack to give the Third Maniple time to consolidate.

In his mind's eye, he could see the Legion being pushed back. It would not be long before they were broken apart and isolated, where they would surely be overrun.

"Raise Captain-Major Ostollus," Alcyonius commanded his adjutant. "I want to know what his Legion is doing on my flank."

"Doing so," Leleb replied. "There's a lot of weird stuff echoing in the channels. Not sure if I can get through."

"Do it anyway. And see if you can raise Fourth Maniple, tell them to send a runner and scout. If that bastard is pulling out without us, that flank will be overrun before we know what's going on."

"Captain-Major," said Captain Brochus, in a clear voice that everyone present could hear. "Pheristus reports that the Sangheili have fired upon the Second Maniple."

The whole room went quiet. The grey-furred Captain carefully studied his commander for a long time before his gaze dropped back down to the comm console before him, and he continued to read the message.

"He humbly requests that you, as his Alpha, give him leave to return fire, and either force them back to their post, or perhaps seize their vehicles altogether."

The eye of every officer in the room fell upon Alcyonius. They waited with bated breath for him to give the order. So too were the eyes of Lehe 'Osodnee and the assassins purported to be his bodyguards. It was the crucial call of the most important battle of his life, but he couldn't bring himself to care.

"Leleb, send the order to fall back, just as was planned. Fourth, Third, and Second Maniples are to-"

 _"_ _Liar!"_ Brochus bellowed. "You swore we would defend ourselves if the clawfaced bastards betrayed us, and now-"

"That was a promise, not a suicide pact," Alcyonius replied.

Someone drew their gun, but not before Alcyonius drew Jhetus's mauler and leveled it at him. It was too late. One of the Sangheili bodyguards already had his blade drawn, and even though he was moving to shield Lehe, the guards at the front door were going for their weapons. The whole room was one wrong word from bloodshed.

"Leleb, order the damned retreat!" Alcyonius snarled, but the Unggoy just looked from him to Brochus.

"Don't you see what's happening?" Brochus demanded. "Have you, our sworn Alpha, gone blind?"

"I ordered every one of you to keep the peace, and not to attack first," Alcyonius replied. "If Pheristus has kept true to that order, then he shall keep true to this one, and retreat as I command. But if he has broken that order, he will ignore this one, and I'll gladly leave him behind for the Parasite. In the meantime, you arrogant ass, we have to retreat because _there is a gaping hole in our air defen-_ "

The whole building shook as if struck by the wrath of the gods. The floor rolled like the deck of a storm-tossed ship, toppling men and consoles alike. Alcyonius himself was thrown against the map table, from where he saw the entire spinward wall collapse onto the men who stood guard at the front door.

There was an awful racket, so loud it was a physical presence. It was a grinding and cracking sound, combined with the scream of girders twisting and tearing free of each other. It sounded as if the whole auction house was falling in on itself. But at long last, there came a merciful silence.

Alcyonius rose and blinked the dust from his eyes. The building's power had failed, and now was now illuminated only by the light from the consoles and the map table. It made the smoke-filled room feel like a tomb.

It smelled like a tomb too. For that reason, Alcyonius unholstered his spike rifle and shot the first thing that moved.

It was a little thing that scurried like a vermin, and the spikes burst its body open like a rotten melon.

In the brief illumination of his muzzle flash, he saw other things moving through the rubble, so he shouted an alarm and kept firing. More warriors joined the fight, and someone had the good sense to set off a flare. That was the first time that Alcyonius got a look at the Enemy.

The battered, blackened prow of an airship jutted through the pile of rubble that had once been the receiving hall of the auction house. Things stumbled through the rubble, vile things that had once been subjects of the Covenant Empire. Many had been Sangheili, but the Parasite had burrowed into their hearts and built a nest of hardened flesh and bone. From there, the corruption had spread, rotting away the skin or subsuming it into the muscle beneath. Their limbs were twisted and malformed, and they walked like puppets on strings.

They looked less like corpses than demons from half-forgotten myths.

"Fall back!" Alcyonius bellowed. "Suppress with grenades and fall back!"

The abominations surged over the rubble, heedless of the hail of plasma and spikes. At their feet swarmed Parasites like sacks of flesh that skittered about on rootlike tentacles.

They closed the distance before many of Alcyonius's warriors could react. Claws cut into armor and tentacle whips bit into flesh. Warriors died screaming.

A thing that had once been a Sangheili landed on a console beside Alcyonius and regarded him for an instant. Not with eyes, for it no longer had eyes. The eyes had shriveled up in their sockets, and the head flopped uselessly at the end of an atrophied neck. No, it watched him with feelers that sprouted from the nest of hardened flesh in its breast. Through those strange sensory organs, Alcyonius could feel the gaze of a guiding intelligence. One that was unfathomably alien and infinitely malevolent.

It lunged, but he already had the gun up, and was dumping the magazine into its center mass. It fell short and crashed into the ground like a sack of grain.

"Retreat!" he bellowed over the din of battle. "I said suppress with grenades and fall back!"

Grenades were already going off, and the surviving headquarters staff were fleeing. All was chaos. Warriors were dying, or shooting each other in the confusion. The thralls were already in their midst, and so were the Parasites. Alcyonius witnessed one of his favorite junior officers die, blood seeping from rents in his armor, feebly clawing at the Parasite that was forcing its way into his mouth. The Captain-Major emptied his magazine into the officer's head, and uttered a brief prayer for the man's soul.

Lehe and his bodyguards were making a stand at the rear of the room with plasma rifles and swords. Alcyonius shouted one last time for them to retreat as he passed by.

"You would abandon your headquarters?" Lehe shouted. "How will you lead your troops?"

"That aircraft could have plowed clear through this building!" Alcyonius shouted. "It didn't. The Parasite came here for us!"

At first, Alcyonius thought his words had struck horror in to the envoy's heart, but the envoy continued to stare, and so Alcyonius spared a look over his shoulder.

Through the gloom, he saw a thing that he could have mistaken for a tree if he didn't see it walking. It stood twice as tall as the thralls around it, and two long whip-like arms sprouted from its shoulders.

"You can't fight that!" Alcyonius bellowed, shoving Lehe toward the door. "Run!"

They fled into the next gallery over, and were greeted by a firing line. Captain Beringus had rallied his pack, and a pair of red-armored Mgalekgolo stood in their midst. As soon as the Captain-Major and the envoy were clear, the troops opened fire. A cascade of plasma poured through the doorway, or ripped into the walls where the thralls were tearing their way through. A warrior with a needler in each hand fired streams of Subanite shards that homed in on thrall and parasite alike.

But the Parasite kept coming.

Plasma weapons overheated and spike rifles ran dry. At a critical moment when many warriors were reloading or otherwise distracted, the tree-thing struck. With its long limbs, it tore the wall asunder like a grief-stricken man might tear his cloak, and then it stormed through the wall in an explosion of laminate and veneer.

It advanced upon the Covenant warriors with the speed of a war chariot, each step thundering like an artillery cannon. It crossed its arms before it, warding off the gunfire that flew its way.

One of the Mgalekgolo stomped out in front of the line and raised its weapon. Instead of an assault cannon, it bore a heavy multifoliate. Rows of petals on the muzzle of the gun unfolded and spread, and then the whole room was bathed in furious light.

For all of its resemblance to a Wraith's mortar or a Scarab's excavation beam, the multifoliate functioned like neither. Rather than a bolide or an incandescent beam, the multifoliate launched spears of plasma, each one hot enough to incinerate a body. And it could launch volleys of these spears in rapid succession.

The tree-thing caught the brunt of the first two salvos, and all but ceased to exist. The third salvo of plasma spears splashed against the remains of the wall or flew into the headquarters proper. Whatever they struck burst into flames.

A fire now stretched across the gallery and into the next room, a fire that would soon be an inferno.

"Everyone out!" Alcyonius shouted, but his words were lost as the whole building shook again. Another aircraft had struck the building. Any more and the rafters would come crashing down. "Everyone out! Rally at the courtyard in the rear!"

Most of the men were Captain Beringus's Pack, the same warriors that had stormed the temple with him this morning. They fought now as they did then, following his lead and covering each other's backs. Dozens of thralls rushed them, each dying to a flurry of plasma and hot metal.

This was the way it ought to be. The men anticipated his orders, and he knew where to direct them. They fought as Alpha and Pack. If he could start all over, with these warriors as the core of a new unit, and keep out the self-obsessed saboteurs like Pheristus and Brochus and Jhetus, he could build a Legion that he would be proud to lead.

All they had to do was survive.

"Call your shuttle!" Alcyonius ordered Lehe during a lull in the fighting.

"Are you sending me away?" the envoy asked incredulously.

"I don't know if your lot attacked us or not. Either way, you need to talk your Fieldmaster down. You can't do that here."

Lehe complied and pulled out his communicator.

At long last, they stumbled out of the building and into the courtyard that his men had, briefly, turned into a motor pool. And there, gliding over the far wall, was the envoy's shuttle. Alcyonius was disheartened to see that it was a Wisp dropship, a small craft that could carry four passengers. If only it had been a Phantom or a Spirit, he could have worked with that.

"Secure the landing zone! Give the Sangheili time to leave!"

For one terrifying moment, his own warriors refused to move. Then Beringus repeated that order, and they sullenly took up positions around the Wisp, facing outward.

"Go to the rendezvous point, get your commander back into the fight," Alcyonius repeated as he led Lehe to the Wisp. "If Captain-Minor Pheristus attacked first, I'll rip his head off and stake him out for the Parasite."

"Yes, Captain-Major," Lehe replied. "I'm sure that this has all been a grave misunderstanding. I will clear it up at once."

"And take Leleb with you."

Alcyonius's adjutant huffed in surprise, and failed to keep the relief out of his voice. "You're sending me away too?"

"You will coordinate the retreat. Second, Third, and Fourth Maniple are to fall back. First Maniple will bring up the rear."

"And you?"

"I will be with the First Maniple as they cover your retreat. Should anything happen to me, Captain-Minor Sternachus is in charge."

The little Unggoy stared up at Alcyonius in wonderment.

"For years, I have led from the front. It is time for me to lead from behind," the Captain-Major said.

Leleb snapped out of his stupor and bowed deeply. "It has been an honor to serve you, my Alpha!"

With that, he turned tail and ran to catch up with the envoy. The Wisp lifted off as soon as Leleb scrambled aboard, and soon disappeared over the far wall.

"'Today, I lead from behind,'" Captain Beringus quoted. "You always did have a way with fancy speeches."

"Tell the men to form up and file out. We're going to steal a dropship and get off this wretched station."

Beringus barked out a sharp laugh. "That's the best one yet!"

With a heavy heart, Alcyonius turned to him. "The time for jokes is long past."

"But what of the Legion? The men need you!"

 _"_ _Then they should have listened to me!"_ Alcyonius snarled. "Time and time again, I've pulled them out of the fire, and each time they spat in my face. No more. Let them fend for themselves!"

Beringus's men were staring at him. Some with hope, but most with barely concealed scorn. He had said the wrong words. The unity of the Jiralhanae was a lie. So too was the notion that the leadership rose to the top only by strength and wisdom. But those were lies that the men fervently believed, as surely as they believed in the Great Journey.

Most of them would follow him off High Charity, if only to escape the Flood. But never again would any of them hail him as their Alpha. They would be deserters, and they would all be shamed for it.

Well then. If it shamed them so much, they could stay here and fight it out to the end. He'd lost their respect, and at the same time he'd lost all respect for them. Alcyonius was tired of living up to the standard they professed, a standard that even Tartarus doubtlessly fell short of. Had he failed? Perhaps, but he'd failed down to the level of Pheristus and Jhetus and a dozen others, and he hadn't seen them cast out until he'd done it himself.

Beringus, his longtime friend, perhaps the only one he had left, barked orders to his Pack to get moving. Some of the others, the guards and the communication technicians who had somehow survived the flight from the headquarters, fell in line.

Alcyonius climbed atop the remains of a troop carrier and surveyed the battlefield. Behind him, the burning edifice of the auction hall crumpled and collapsed in on itself, sending a cloud of sparks rising. The inferno that was consuming the auction hall was one of many that had been set in the district, lending a hellish glow to the city. Dark shapes of excavation walkers roamed about, striking aircraft from the sky with fore and aft cannon.

Above the sound of raging fires and the crumps of distant battle, there was the moan of a great wind, like the cyclone-storms of his homeland. Through the smoke that clouded the sky above, he could see rents in the bulkhead-sky. Stray shots from the defenders had breached the bulkhead-sky, and the atmosphere was slowly venting into the void.

He had won glory in the war against the sacrilegious Humans. He had conquered territory when the fight came to High Charity, wealth and territory he might have called his own after the heretic Sangheili were put in their place. All that fortune, all that fame… Right now, Alcyonius would have traded it for a dropship without a shred of regret.

* * *

 **A/N: Thanks go out to Xeno Major and Dovahkiin for some sage advice that tied this chapter together, and apologies go out to my readers for taking so long to write it.**

 **This is one of the longest chapters in the story so far. Even so, there's a lot of worldbuilding details that had to get axed for the sake of time and the flow of the narrative. I'm going to try filling the gaps between chapters with snippets and historical notes.**


End file.
